Volume 31: Number 205
Thu, 12 Dec 2013
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:13:54 -0500
Subject: [Avodah] The Aish Kodesh on the Holocaust
Gush sent a digest for 10 beTeiveis. R' Amital was a survivor, and 10
beTeiveis as a day to reflect on the Holocaust is a firm part of Gush's
culture. The digest is at http://vbm-torah.org/archive/chag74/10tevet74.htm
The attached essay is R' Tamir Granot's analysis of the Piaseczno Rebbe's
comments on the topic, taken from derashos given to a qehillah living
through the horrors (collected in what was named Aish Qodesh). I found it
to be a collection of valuable reflections on theodicy. I'm intentionally
sending it out as its own digest.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash
ASARA BE-TEVET 5774
This Package contains:
1. The Status of the Fasts Nowadays, by Rav David Brofsky
2. Dealing with the Suffering of the Holocaust: The Teachings
of the "Esh Kodesh," by Rav Tamir Granot
See additional articles for Asara beTevet at:
http://vbm-torah.org/10Tevet.htm
...
********************************************************************
Dealing with the Suffering of the Holocaust:
The Teachings of the "Esh Kodesh"
By Rav Tamir Granot
Translated by Kaeren Fish
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, the Rebbe of Piaseczno, composed "Esh
Kodesh," an extraordinary collection of sermons, in the Warsaw Ghetto
during the Holocaust. This work is outstanding in its honesty, its power,
and its religious and existential depths, especially considering the
impossible and nightmarish circumstances of its writing. Because of
its historical and philosophical importance, "Esh Kodesh" has been
researched and discussed at length. Among the articles written about
it, I will make mention of only three of the most comprehensive. M.
Piekarz uses the derashot to reconstruct a sort of existential and
spiritual biography of the Rebbe during the four-year period of writing
the book (Polish Chassidism: Ideological Trends Between the World Wars
and During the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 5759), pp. 373-411 [Heb.]). E.
Schweid looks at the Rebbe's teachings from before the Holocaust and
analyzes in depth some philosophical and psychological aspects of his
thought during the Holocaust (From Destruction to Salvation: Reactions in
Ultra-Orthodox Thought to the Holocaust in Its Time (Tel Aviv, 1994),
pp. 105-154 [Heb.]). Rav Shagar emphasized the special character of
the Rebbe's approach to suffering. Readers seeking to read further
are directed to these works (Broken Vessels (Efrat, 5764), pp. 134-140
[Heb.]). What follows is based in part on some of their conclusions,
with some additional thoughts.
A. Biography
The Rebbe Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira was the son of Rabbi Elimelekh
of Grodzinsk and his second wife, Chana Bracha, the daughter of the Rebbe
of Hanchin, and was born in 1889. He took up his first rabbinical post
in 1909, and was appointed rabbi of the Polish town of Piaseczno in 1913.
He was the descendant of a dynasty of tzaddikim from Lizhensk, Kozhnitz,
and Moglanitze. At the age of 16, he married Chaya Rachel Miriam, daughter
of the Rebbe of Kozhnitz. In 1923, he founded the yeshiva Da'at Moshe,
which he headed. His devotion to education led him to write several books
before the Holocaust, but of these only Chovat Ha-Talmidim was printed at
the time, in 1932. The other books were published by Piaseczno chassidim
in Israel after the war.
At the beginning of the war, the Rebbe suffered a terrible blow when his
son, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law and mother were all taken within the
space of a month. He lived in the ghetto until its liquidation in 1943.
He died in a camp near Lublin, where the survivors of the ghetto were
murdered in what was known as the "reaping festival" at the end of 1943.
The name "Esh Kodesh" (Holy Fire) was given to the book by Piaseczno
chassidim in Israel. The story of how this manuscript came to be saved
is a wonder in its own right. It was discovered in Poland in the late
1950's by Barukh Duvdevani, who photographed it on microfilm and brought
it to the chassidim in Israel, who then published it in 1960.
B. No Denial, No Justification
A person who is suffering will typically react in one of two ways: a.
denial or suppression; b. justification.
The first reaction means creating an existential or philosophical
perspective that diminishes the importance of the actual suffering.
A religious person, for instance, may say: "True life, real happiness,
is not to be found in this world, but rather in the World to Come."
From the depths of his faith, he will then relate to his suffering in
the here-and-now as a transient, insignificant episode in relation to
eternal life. Clearly, such a position -- enlisting a philosophical point
of view and applying it to actual distress -- may also have existential
validity. It is like a person who is forced to walk barefoot in a field
that is full of stones and thorns, and who tells himself all the time,
"in another quarter of an hour I will be out of this; all of this will
be over," thereby blunting the intensity of his pain in the present.
The second reaction does not diminish the suffering, but rather awards it
some reason and meaning. Suffering is exacerbated when we perceive it as
a decree of fate, as arbitrary. If, on the other hand, the suffering is
just, if it is deliberate and appropriate, then it may be borne by one's
conscious mind, even though it is painful. In other words, suffering is
a psychosomatic phenomenon; it is comprised of a physical element and
a psychological element. The latter is bound up with our perception of
the suffering; if it is just, then it is easier to bear.
The Rebbe of Piaseczno rejects both options. Concerning the first,
he says:
There are calamities for which it is possible to accept consolation.
A person may have had an illness from which he recovered. Although
he had been in great danger and in tremendous pain, when with God's
help he was healed, he was immediately consoled for all the pain he
endured. Similarly, if money was lost, then when God restores the
lost fortune, consolation follows quickly. But when lives are lost,
it is impossible to accept solace. It is true that when the pain is
due to the loss of family and loved ones, or to the loss of other
Jewish people because they were precious and are sorely missed,
it is possible to take comfort in other surviving relatives and
different friends. But any decent person mourns the loss of others
not simply because he misses them; it is not only his yearning for
them that causes pain and distress. The real cause of his grief is
the death of the other -- the loss of life.
(Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira, Sacred Fire: Torah from
the Years of Fury 1939-1942, translated by J.H. Worch [Jason
Aronson], p.200, Shabbat Nachamu -- August 9, 1941)
The Rebbe presents an existential position that also assumes religious
grounding. Life, in the simplest sense, is good; that is our unmediated
experience of it. The desire to live, and acceptance of the normal order
of life, is part of the fundamental law of Creation; it is not a spiritual
shortcoming or deficiency. Therefore, the simple feeling of the goodness
of life, and the evil of its absence, is the most proper and natural
attitude. Our sources support this view: the Torah promises long life to
those who perform the mitzvot; hence, the existential experience of the
goodness of life itself is also God's blessing to those who perform His
will. Untimely, death is thus rightly perceived as evil -- not only for
us, because we miss those who pass on (after all, the passing of someone
who is very old still leaves us with a sense of loss and a longing, even
though it is not experienced as "evil"), but first and foremost for the
dead person himself, who has lost his life, which was fundamentally good.
This clear existential position leaves no room for denial or suppression
by invoking the World to Come or the like; it proposes that the evil
of death be acknowledged and addressed directly. Any other reaction is
false; either it is not being uttered honestly, from the heart, or it
requires that one nullify the heart.
The other possibility -- the justification of suffering -- was available
to the Rebbe of Piaseczno, and he even mentioned it at the beginning
of the war. However, as time went on, the troubles grew increasingly
severe, with the Nazi madness attaining unimagined dimensions. The
Rebbe concluded that the suffering of the Holocaust could not be dealt
with by justification in any familiar sense of the expression, since
it truly exceeded any sort of suffering invoked by memory or tradition
in teaching about punishment or repair for sins. In 5703, three years
after the beginning of the war, the Rebbe wrote:
[Note added by author on the eve of the holy Sabbath, Kislev
18-November 27, 1942.] No such torment as was endured until the
middle of 1942 has ever transpired previously in history. The bizarre
tortures and the freakish, brutal murderers that have been invented
for us by the depraved, perverted murderers, solely for the suffering
of Israel, since the middle of 1942, are, according to my knowledge
of the words of our sages of blessed memory, and of the chronicles
of the Jewish people in general, unprecedented and unparalleled. May
God have mercy upon us, and save us from their hands, in the blink
of an eye. (See note on p. 251, see also p. 209 in the note)
If the punishment is really of such a different order of magnitude, so
qualitatively different, then it cannot be considered a punishment for the
sins of the nation or the like, for if it were so, it should have assumed
the familiar modes of punishment. (Rav Yitzchak Hutner refused to call the
Shoah by that name, insisting that despite its extent, it was ultimately
no more than another blow like others that Am Yisrael had received over
the course of its history. Clearly, the Rebbe of Piaseczno experienced the
Holocaust in a completely different way and drew a different conclusion.)
Moreover, even when God punishes, He does not act out of a drive for
revenge. Punishment must have a constructive purpose -- it is meant to
teach a lesson, to lead to soul-searching, to repentance, etc. "When you
are in distress and all of these things have befallen you... then you
will return to the Lord your God, and obey Him" (Devarim 4:30). Here,
however, the Rebbe witnessed good, wholehearted Jews losing their faith.
Something had been lost, as it were, in the vital equilibrium of Divine
justice. If everything was being destroyed -- if there was no more
education, no more society, no more beit midrash or synagogue, if it
was impossible to study Torah, and all of this lasted for several years,
then how could any repentance and return to God grow out of it?
Worse still -- in the personal, internal sense as well there is a point
of equilibrium up to which suffering may be a catalyst for improvement
and repair, prayer and soul-searching, but beyond which body and soul
alike are broken and the person is shattered. At that point, there is
no longer a person to pray or to be improved in the most fundamental
existential sense. The purpose of suffering may be compared to the
function of a vaccination, or even to an illness. So long as the body
is generally healthy, it develops antibodies; it prevails, and is even
strengthened as a result of the encounter with the bacteria. However,
if the dose is too heavy, or the attacks on the body are too frequent,
then the effect will be detrimental; the immune system may collapse
altogether, and the body will no longer be able to mount a positive
combative response. In the spiritual realm, the same principle applies.
Indeed, the Rebbe declares, the dose is too high; there is no longer
any strength to pray or to study. This being the case, what is it that
God desires to achieve? What purpose is there to such suffering?
Every Jewish person prays to God and cries out to Him, blessed be
He, regarding any calamity [that it should not occur]. And when,
God forbid, the trouble is even greater, he cries out even more,
as it is written (Esther 4:1), "And Mordechai cried a great and
bitter cry." Even when there is no impending calamity, we pray
to God because prayer itself is closeness to God. When we pray,
we pray with a full voice, as it is written in sacred literature,
"The voice awakens the intention (kavana), the intention awakens the
voice." But what can we do when they do not permit us to cry out,
or even to congregate for prayer, and we are forced to pray in hidden
places, and every Jewish heart must lament this alone? At least in the
depths of his heart, every Jew must shout out to God about it. (p.124)
In other words, so long as suffering leads to repentance -- or even just
to a cry to God, without repentance -- it contributes towards bringing
us closer to God, as we learn from Mordekhai's reaction in Megillat
Esther. Crying out to God is itself a form of closeness; therefore,
it is a positive result arising from suffering. But if the objective
conditions do not allow for prayer, then what value can there be to the
suffering? Here it must be noted that the Rebbe is under no illusions;
he is well aware that the objective and social dimension of prayer plays
a not-insignificant role in the positive inspiration and motivation that
arises from it. When a Jew is forced to pray alone, in silence and in
hiding, unable to cry out -- simply to cry out! -- and unable to reveal
what is in his heart to God along with his fellow Jews, then even the
fountain of the heart is blocked. The intensity of the suffering grows
even more oppressive when we discover that we cannot even cry out to God.
What, then, remains for us?!
Elsewhere, the Rebbe recounts bitterly the melancholy and frustration
gripping him and those around him when he discovers that the more their
troubles intensify and continue, so their enthusiasm and desire to pray
and to serve God diminish -- not only under the influence of theological
questions, but simply because there is no more strength:
At kiddush, after services on the holy Sabbath, I remarked, "I
would have thought that in such troubled times as these, when Rosh
Hashanah comes around, the prayers of Jewish people would be shouted,
and the outpourings of the heart would gush like a torrent of water.
But although we trust in God that our prayers have been effective,
everyone can see that before the war, our prayers were louder and more
passionate and offered with a greater outpouring of the heart than
the prayers that were uttered during Rosh Hashanah this year. This
is simply because our bodies are so weakened and Jews have no more
strength. But, in addition, we observe that in general Rosh Hashanah
and Shabbat Shuva, the Sabbath of Repentance, lack the trepidation
and passion with which they were celebrated previously." [Now, as
I am writing this, I can add that others have told my they agree:
They have observed it too.]
What has caused this to happen? Firstly, as King David said (Tehillim
138:3), "On this day when I called, You answered me, and strengthened
me with strength in my soul." When a Jewish person prays, and his
prayers are answered, his subsequent prayers are even stronger and
stimulated to greater passion. But when he prays and then sees that
not only are his prayers not answered but his troubles actually
increase, may the Merciful One protect us, a person's heart falls
and he can not arouse himself to passionate prayer.
The second reason is, as we have already said, *for anything to really
happen, for faith and for joy, there needs to be a real person to
experience the faith and the joy -- but when the person has been
wholly crushed and squashed, there is no one left to rejoice.*
(p. 230)
Every Jew knows that his prayers are not always answered. Rashi teaches
that "iyun tefilla," in its negative sense, means the expectation
that my requests will be fulfilled; concerning this it is written,
"An expectation that is deferred makes the heart sick" (Mishlei 13:12)
(see Berakhot 55a and Rashi ad loc.). Nevertheless, over the course
of months and years of continuous suffering accompanied with prayer,
those suffering in the Holocaust expected at least some sign, if not
real salvation. All of these prayers had apparently been rejected,
and there was no more will to pray.
Moreover, as noted above, even if a person finds within himself the
religious faith that motivates him to pray, he must still remain a
"person." In order to be able to pray, he has to exist above a certain
minimum level of healthy consciousness, with a sense of continuity,
life-force, a desire to live, etc. When he is completely bent and broken,
there is simply no person left to pray.
The suffering therefore appears to be devoid of any purpose. If the only
possible effect is a loss of faith or a weakening of religious commitment,
then how can this be of any benefit? Hence, the path of justifying God's
judgment is irrelevant in the context of the suffering of the Holocaust,
since this was quite unlike any punishment that the nation had ever
known, and especially because it exceeded the point of equilibrium of
God's attribute of justice, shattering the last remnants of dignity and
decent human existence.
C. Despair?
The perspective set forth above shuts out any possible theory of theodicy,
since the punishment seems devoid of any purpose. However, we must
also consider its existential significance: if there is no prayer or
repentance, nor any possibility of understanding God's actions, then we
are seemingly led in the direction of frustration and despair. Is this
an accurate expression of the feeling of the Rebbe of Piaseczno? Did
he really experience his situation as a dead end? Furthermore, it must
be remembered, the Rebbe did not write all this as a personal diary.
He grappled with these questions within the context of sermons to his
chassidim. How could such a sermon strengthen them? Did he offer them
any positive horizon?
An answer to this question -- or at least an indication of a
direction -- is to be found in the concluding section of the sermon
quoted above:
The same applies to passion and arousal in prayer. The Jew is falling
now, lying prone and crushed, there is no one to be aroused in prayer.
However, King David said (Tehillim 130:1), "Out of my straits I
called upon God." That is, I called not just from one straitened
circumstance, but from straits-plural. Though I called upon You when I
fell into my first crises, and not only was not answered and rescued
but plunged even deeper into crisis -- straits within straits --
nevertheless, I take strength and call upon You again. (Sacred Fire,
p. 230)
The Rebbe concludes the first sermon that we quoted above in the same
vein:
At least in the depths of his heart, every Jew must shout out to
God about it. (ibid., p. 124)
When a person considers his deplorable state, his inability to pray,
this in itself serves as catalyst. The sorrow over the inability to cry
out gives rise to a cry from a more primal place -- the cry for the right
to cry. So long as there is some spark in him that has not been crushed
by his troubles, allowing him to examine his spiritual state from the
outside, as it were, then even if it reveals the deplorable state that
he is in, so long as that spark exists, there is still meaning to his
existence.
In sharing his existential distress with his chassidim, the Rebbe
arouses in them feelings of understanding and partnership, drawing them
out of the unbearable deluge of dark thoughts and troubles, towards a
perspective from which they may grieve together over their physical and
spiritual situation.
D. To Weep with God
The Rebbe of Piascezno states that the lack of will to engage in Torah
or prayer when one is surrounded by illness, hunger, terror, and death
is not only the result of the physical and psychological reality that
is being forced upon them, but is also born of the moral feeling that
doing so would represent an unfeeling, insensitive escape from the
existential situation:
There are times when a person wonders about himself, thinking,
"I am broken, I am ready to burst into tears at any moment, and in
fact I break down in tears from time to time. How can I possibly
learn Torah? What can I do to find the strength not just to learn
Torah, but to discover new Torah and a chassidut (piety)?" Then
there are times when a person beats his heart, saying, "*Is it not
simply my supercilious heart allowing me to be so stubborn, to learn
Torah in the midst of my pain, and in the midst of the pain of the
Jews, whose suffering is so great?*" And then he answers himself,
"But I am so broken. I have cried so much, my whole life is fraught
with grief and dejection." He is lost inside his introspective,
self-analytical confusion. (ibid., pp.315-316)
The Rebbe's question is: Does the almost natural religious reaction of
retreating into the warm and safe embrace of Torah study or prayer not
represent an unnatural hardening of the heart?
Further on in the same sermon, the Rebbe offers another insight into
his anguish. The helplessness and despair caused by unceasing sorrow has
two sources: a. the lack of hope; and b. the experience of loneliness.
The difficulty in praying or studying and the retreat into one's own
sorrow are the result of a sense of God's abandonment, leaving me alone;
He does not hear me. However, in the depths of this feeling there is
perhaps a spark of consolation, which the Rebbe reveals through an
analysis of God's revelation to Moshe during the time of Bnei Yisrael's
suffering. As we know, prophecy comes to a person only when he is in a
state of joy (see, for example, Rambam's commentary on Avot 6:5, based
on Berakhot 31a), for it is only out of joy and uplifting the spirit
that a person may attain closeness to God:
It could be asked: How could Moses have had a prophetic revelation,
when to receive prophecy a person must be in a state of simcha
(joy)? Aside from the fact that Pharaoh was trying to kill him,
Moses was anguished over the pain of the Jewish people. Moses had
such empathy with the pain of the Jews that he later said to God,
"Please forgive their sin. If not, blot me out from this book that
You have written." (Shemot 32:32). (Ibid., p.315)
A person who is suffering or full of sorrow is far from God. His spirit
cannot uplift itself to draw close to Him, for "strength and gladness are
in His place" (I Divrei Ha-yamim 16:27); hence, sorrow and despair cannot
bring him close to God. Is this truly the case? The Rebbe discovers,
from the midrash, that sometimes it is specifically out of the depths
of our weeping and anguish that God is revealed to us:
This is the very reason why God appeared to Moses for the first
time from within the burning thorn bush. Rashi (Shemot 3:2) explains
the choice of the thorn bush by quoting the verse (Tehillim 91:15)
"I am with him in his pain."
So long as God has only "strength and rejoicing in His abode"
(I Divrei Ha-yamim 16:27) then prophets, too, can prophesy only
when they also are be-simcha (joyous). But when God is, as it were,
together with the Jews in their pain and trouble, then prophecy may
also come to the prophet who is likewise in pain over the plight of
the Jews.
In the Talmud (Chagiga 5b) we learn: "It is written (Yirmiyahu
13:17), 'My soul weeps in mistarim (concealment).' Is there then
any weeping on the face of the Holy Blessed One, as it is written,
'Beauty and splendor before Him; strength and rejoicing in His abode'
(I Divrei Ha-yamim 16:27)? There is no contradiction. One verse
refers to the inner chambers, while the other chambers." Thus, we
learn that while in the outer chambers of heaven there is always
"strength and rejoicing" before God, within the inner chambers,
God weeps in His distress, as it were, over the pain of the Jews.
So it is possible that at a time of hesther panim (concealment of
the Divine Face), which is to say, when God hides Himself within the
inner chambers, a Jew may also enter and be alone with God there,
each Jew at his own level. There, within the inner chambers, Torah
and worship are revealed to each person who enters. We have already
spoken about how the Oral Torah was revealed primarily in exile,
in Babylon, and how the holy Zohar was only revealed to Rabbi Shimon
bar Yochai and his son Rabbi Elazar when they were living in a cave,
fleeing the Romans government, afraid for their lives. (ibid., p.315)
The Master of the universe does not ignore the suffering of Am Yisrael.
He weeps together with us. The faith and continuous sense of God's
closeness -- "there is no place that is devoid of Him" -- means that
God is with us literally. Hence, our weeping is not something external
to God; rather, He joins in it. It is possible to hear the silent,
inner weeping of the Divine Presence that joins with the weeping of Am
Yisrael and the weeping of each and every individual Jew. This joint
weeping creates a renewed intimacy with God -- the sort of intimacy that
sometimes develops between people who reveal their shared suffering to
each other. And if this gives rise to prayer or Torah, then it is not
Torah that is extraneous to the suffering, but rather Torah that is born
of that suffering; not only is it not alienated from it, but it has the
power to comfort and console:
And then he answers himself, "But I am so broken. I have cried so much,
my whole life is fraught with grief and dejection." He is lost inside
his introspective, self-analytical confusion. But as we have said above,
it is the Holy Blessed One who is crying within the inner chambers,
and whoever presses himself close to God through Torah is able to weep
there together with God, and also to learn Torah with Him.
This is the difference. The pain and grief that one suffers over his own
situation, alone in isolation, can break a person. He may even fall so
far that he becomes immobilized by it. But the crying that a person does
together with God makes him strong. He cries and takes strength. He is
shattered, and then emboldened to study and to worship (p.316).
God's "inner sanctuaries" are not in the heavens. They are the recesses of
the soul, of man's innermost existence. Submission to suffering happens
in the outer sanctuaries -- in the world of "asiya" -- the tangible,
objective world. But when the soul finds the strength to look beyond
the suffering, or when it looks inward to that deep place within the
sorrow that is not embittered or despairing towards life but rather a
genuine sorrow over its situation, over the situation of the Divine
Presence, over the absurdity of existence -- then it encounters the
"inner sanctuary," and there it discovers that its weeping is not alone.
In many of his sermons, the Rebbe of Piaseczno raises the question:
why is the world not destroyed by the depths of the evil and suffering
within it? How is God in His goodness able to bear such a world? How is
it that the screams and cries do not explode the world? This question
has a paradoxical answer that pertains to God's own suffering:
And so, the world continues to exist steadfast; it is not obliterated
by God's pain and His voice at the suffering of his people and the
destruction of His house, because God's pain never enters into the
world. (Ibid., p.287)
God's sorrow is "without limit, greater than the world" (ibid.) --
apparently because, from the perspective of the infinite perfection
of Divine goodness, the suffering and evil of this world are truly
unbearable -- since every sorrow or suffering is the result of the
contrast between reality as it is, and what it can and should be. If
God's sorrow were to be imposed on the world, the world would necessarily
cease to exist. Hence, there is no choice but for God to enter His "inner
sanctuaries" -- a higher, "internal" place, hidden from the world, where
He may weep.[1] Metaphorically, we may imagine a mother who observes
her children enduring terrible suffering. She has to weep, but if she is
observed to be weeping openly, it will break them completely. Therefore,
she enters an inner room and weeps there. It is in this hidden, inner
maternal place that God's weeping takes place.
However, His decision to weep in a hidden place is itself the source
of our sense of alienation and loneliness. In this case, the compassion
contradicts itself. The holding back from weeping openly -- lest God's
tears drown the world, as it were -- renders the suffering even more
unbearable, for it means that God is not with us!
The solution to this paradox has already been indicated above. Our weeping
in the beit midrash, the Torah and the prayer that are born of suffering
and troubles -- they are the "inner sanctuaries" of our world, and there
the "empty space" for God's weeping comes about in our world. It is as
though we are saying to God, "Come out from Your hiding. Be with us --
even with weeping; the main thing is that You are with us."
_______________________
[1] The Rebbe must be referring here to the "sefira" of "bina," which is
the great 'mother' of Divine manifestation; the source of mercy. There,
in that maternal place, it is possible to weep. But "bina" lies beyond
the sefirot that are manifest in this world; therefore, God's weeping
is not discernible in the world, and evil and suffering continue.
------------------------------
Avodah mailing list
Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
End of Avodah Digest, Vol 31, Issue 205
***************************************
Send Avodah mailing list submissions to
avodah@lists.aishdas.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
avodah-request@lists.aishdas.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
avodah-owner@lists.aishdas.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Avodah digest..."
A list of common acronyms is available at
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/acronyms.cgi
(They are also visible in the web archive copy of each digest.)