And you think *synagogue dues* are expensive?!
Check out Parshat (weekly reading) Naso, Numbers, chapter 4, verse 21-chapter 7, verse 89, especially chapter 7, which we read last Shabbat/Sabbath--At the time of the dedication of the Ohel Moed/Tent of Meeting in the Wilderness, the prince of each tribe presented the following offerings:
- one silver dish full of fine flour mixed with oil for a meal-offering
- one silver basin full of fine flour mixed with oil for a meal-offering
- one gold pan full of incense
- one young bull for a burnt-offering
- one ram for a burnt-offering
- one male lamb of the first year for a burnt-offering
- one male goat for a sin-offering
- two oxen for a peace-offering
- five rams for a peace-offering
- five male goats for a peace-offering
- five male lambs of the first year for a peace-offering
posted by Shira Salamone at 8:15 AM
20 Comments:
The cost of sacrifices does indeed come up in the Talmud. Please excuse the lack of detail that follows - I don't have time to check extended memory.
Rewrite - I can't resist - here's a link.
My summary: Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel was so concerned by the high price of turtledoves (used by women who had just given birth) that he said "I will make sure the price falls by the end of the day." He publicly proclaimed that due to high prices, only one sacrifice would be required instead of the usual 5. The price of the birds fell immediately in response.
The dvar torah I made up about the gifts of the chieftains is that it is from this we learn of the importance of gift registries. The tabernacle received 12 silver spoons, for example, but they didn't get any forks!
Larry, thanks for the link. That was very interesting reading. It's good to know that the rabbis tried to make it easier for the poor to buy a sacrificial animal.
Nu, no forks? What's a sacred barbecue with no forks? :)
And I can't think of any actions in recent memory where the Rabbis have attempted to actually DECREASE prices by decreasing demand.
I see a bunch of rulings that increase demand while suggesting that prices should be lower.
Clearly religious education has fallen in the last 1500 years... :)
Another wise guy heard from. :)
On the serious side, though, I agree that that little seems to be done nowadays to ease the financial challenge of being Jewish.
Rabbis could reduce prices somewhat for their congregants:
1) Enthusiastically support Chalav Stam
2) Allow Ashkenazim to use non-glatt meat
3) Support fewer larger day schools with a more diverse hashkafic curriculum
4) Publicize which products don't require hecksherim and encourage people to buy the unheckshered version of the products
5) Discourage conspicuous consumption - many try, but few will put their foot down for wealthy congregants.
6) Encourage people to give to local day schools instead of Israeli and other non-local causes. Don't turn this into a polemic against giving to non-Jewish charities though.
But these are not burining issues, and probably rightly so -their effects would be mostly on the margins.
Good ideas, all. They may be "mostly on the margins," but anything that could reduce the cost of Jewish living should be brought to the Jewish community's attention.
Larry,
As an example, the local Rabbi has a Q&A in the Shul newsletter. One question he listed was, "How do I kasher a grill?"
Instead of answering that, he told us that we don't clean our grills properly, so you can't Kasher them, just buy a small one for "special occasions."
Charitably, he was talking about the grills in parks and beaches here, and suggesting you can't Kasher them well enough.
However, as worded, he basically said, "too much work, spend money." I find the attitude of "just buy more stuff" instead of learning what to do very sad. I'd rather he teach people what to do, and they decide if they want to spend the money or the time, instead it's just "spend money, spent money" which is at the root of the problem.
"I find the attitude of "just buy more stuff" instead of learning what to do very sad. I'd rather he teach people what to do, and they decide if they want to spend the money or the time, instead it's just "spend money, spent money" which is at the root of the problem."
Guilty as charged: I've been buying frozen strawberries from the kosher supermarket because I haven't figured out how to get the bugs out of fresh strawberries without creating a soggy, salty mess (from soaking them in salt water). I should really check out some of the "How to kasher . . ." information available on the Orthodox Union website.
It really is symptomatic of our current "throwaway culture" that "throwing money at the problem" seems often to be considered the preferred way to deal with it. That's a contributing factor to the high cost of Jewish (and general) living. Our recent ancestors (including my late mother) somehow managed to keep kosher without spending a fortune buying separate dishwashers for meat and dairy.
Shira,
You are welcome to spend your money however you wish. What is lame is if your Rabbi said, "checking for bugs is annoying to me, so I won't explain it to you, so just pay 3x for nearly rotten strawberries as fresh ones."
Easiest solution for strawberries, cut off the leafy part and some sliver of the flesh... The issues with infestations is in the green part on top, not the berry itself.
Enjoy.
To judge favorably, I assume the rabbi thinks that people will not or even could not clean a much used grill sufficiently for the subsequent heating to actually kasher it. If he's talking about a grill in a public part he's quite likely correct - who is going to be able to heat a grill red hot in such conditions anyway?
If I were writing for the shul bulletin I would have suggested some alternatives to using the grill - hot dogs on a stick like marshmallows that didn't actually ever touch the grill, double wrapped potatoes and corn, which may safely be put on the grill to cook, but as far as the narrow question of 'how can I kasher the grill on a firepit in a public park' I think 'you can't, so if you have to use a grill bring one of your own' is a not unreasonable answer.
Corn on the cob cooked over a fire--yum!
While the boss was at a meeting, I snuck a peek at the strawberry-debugging part of the strawberry-cleaning segment of the OU’s “Kosher Videos—Insect-free: A Guide to Home Vegetable Inspection”. I have a couple of reactions. For openers, a strawberry is supposed to be soaked in vegetable wash for 2-3 minutes, stirred around in the wash, then rinsed under hard-running water for another minute or so. How on earth is a poor strawberry supposed to have any taste left after at least 2 1/2 minutes under water? For closers, the rabbi demonstrating the debugging technique cracked me up when he put the cleaned strawberries right back on the cutting on which the cut-off leaves--the infested part--were still sitting. I don't need s'michah (rabbinical ordination) to know that putting a clean object on a dirty surface gets the clean object dirty--those poor debugged strawberries will have bugs all over them in about 30 seconds!
Er, "right back on the cutting *board.*
Or rabbis could just end the War on Vegetables. The basic argument why leafy vegetables are unkosher and/or require extensive cleaning is that pesticides that protected against bugs are no longer used.
Two flaws in the argument:
Flaw 1: If pesticides aren't used anymore, why is there an organic food industry?
Flaw 2: But Jews used vegetables for thousands of years without EITHER (a) lightboxes and similar aggressive measures or (b) pesticides. Thus, it cannot be the case that either lightboxes or pesticides are required to make vegetables adequately bug-free.
Something doesn't seem to hold water here- with or without veggie wash!
Woodrow, a buddy of mine had a budget-based theory regarding some of the recent bug-based kashrut rulings.
Larry, assuming it was a public park was MY attempt to judge favorably. It's a garbage argument, you can bring a blow torch and do it. I use disposable grills because I'm lazy, but you COULD spend 45 minutes cleaning the grill.
The main times people want to use the grills and would want to kasher them is for birthday parties, etc., in parks. One guy I know had a custom metal top cut (he runs a machine shop), there are answers.
The whole tone of it was weird, and the way it was written seemed to go beyond public grills... I'm really hoping that it was meant for public grills.
Here is the thing, the Q&A is 2 questions, occasionally 3. If he didn't want to explain the halacha, he could have picked another question that he did want to answer. He basically jumped out in public to say "spend more money to be frummy," and that's the cultural issue I have.
"Woodrow, a buddy of mine had a budget-based theory regarding some of the recent bug-based kashrut rulings."
I have another budget-based theory: the more things Kosher Nostra can require heckshers on, the more money one can make issuing Heckshers.
It's called "Profiting from the Crown."
RBT:
I don't think we need to ascribe purely mercenary motives to explain the exploding reach of kashrut agencies. In general, those who join and run such organizations will naturally tend to take kashrut very seriously. Thus, they are more inclined to chumra. Furthermore, they mostly deal (rabbinically) with other rabbis who feel the same way - an OU mashgiach or posek has little reason to contact a local rabbi when questions arise concerning factory made foods. This produces a sort of echo chamber effect. Many companies are trying to get as many people to rely on their hashgacha as possible, which is another reason for inclining towards chumra.
"In general, those who join and run such organizations will naturally tend to take kashrut very seriously. Thus, they are more inclined to chumra."
That in itself is a problem, Larry.
"Many companies are trying to get as many people to rely on their hashgacha as possible, which is another reason for inclining towards chumra."
That's likely, but the result is pretty much what all of us are complaining about, namely, that being observant (or even anything remotely resembling observant) is unnecessarily expensive. By way of example, you (Larry) commented, "4) Publicize which products don't require hecksherim and encourage people to buy the unheckshered version of the products." Can you imagine how much money kosher comsumers could save if they stopped looking for hechsherim (seals indicating that a product is kosher) on just about everything? But, in all seriousness, can you imagine a major kashrut supervision service, such as the OK, the Kaf-K, or the OU's kashrut division doing such a thing?
For the benefit of my readers, I'm linking to the organization that I think you and Malka Esther told us about when we visited you last fall, Kosher Quest.org’s “No hechsher needed" page. It's helpful to know that I don't have to worry about a hechsher on aluminum foil and foil pans, unflavored applesauce, mouthwash, paper plates, or plastic tableware.
can you imagine a major kashrut supervision service, such as the OK, the Kaf-K, or the OU's kashrut division doing such a thing? [recommending unheckshered products]
I have talked to more than one person at the OU about this, or more precisely about refusing to provide kashrut supervision to things that need no supervision such as toilet bowl cleaners, laundry detergents etc. Their attitude is that [begin sarcasm]as long as there is no mixed dancing in the toilet, if someone wants hashgacha they will provide it[end sarcasm]. The only language I can use that impresses them at all is to say that refusing such money would be a kiddush hashem, but they would rather have the money to subsidize the other good works they do.
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