Are Your Hamantaschen: ready to go?It's Purim, party people, and that means you have six mitzvoth to observe in the next couple of days. What, you thought it was just a costume party? The Purim mitzvoth are:

1. Hearing the Megillah. We’re supposed to hear the Megillah twice: Once tonight, and once tomorrow morning.
2. Giving mishloach manot to your friends and family.
   
3. Giving money to the poor.
   
4. Having a festive Purim meal.
   
5. Adding the appropriate prayer, Al Hanisim, during the Amidah
   
6. Being extra happy on Shushan Purim, which this year falls on Shabbat.

Word to the wise: Purim is a great time to try out a new synagogue—you get to see how much liquor they’ve got around and how generous they are with it, and sample their hamantaschen. A lot of synagogues offer Purim Carnivals, such as Ikar in Los Angeles. They're hosting a "Justice" Purim Carnival—with games like Guitar Hero and Wii Sports—from which all proceeds will go to charity. To find a cool shul near you, try shulshopper.

We’ve already covered giving mishloach manot here, but remember that the mitzvah is to distribute them on the day of Purim, which is Friday. Ideally, one should send them by messenger, but if your chauffeur has the day off, it’s cool to deliver them yourself. You should put together and send at least two gift baskets.
You Gotta Give: to everyone who asks on Purim
Giving money and gifts to the poor is an integral part of celebrating Purim. On Friday one should try to give money, food or clothing to at least two needy people. The minimum amount you should give is only about 20 cents per person, but if you can afford to give more, then do so. Technically one is obligated to give money to every needy person who asks on Purim, and it’s preferable to give more money to the poor than to spend tons on your mishloach manot or on making a lavish Purim meal.

Having a festive meal on the day of Purim is one of the less commonly observed mitzvoth, but it need not be. Since Purim falls on Good Friday this year, you might have the day off, which means plenty of time to put together a nice Purim brunch. Check out Not Derby Pie for some great ideas, or our own Jewcy suggestions. And we’re supposed to drink on Purim, so how about mimosas? Another suggestion: Brew up a pitcher of Sukkot Sangria, and tell your friends it's Purim Punch.

Being especially happy and joyous on Shabbat, and adding Al Hanisim during the Amidah are pretty easy to figure out without much explanation.

Now, start cleaning for Pesach…

Related: Must Have: Readymade Purim Baskets, How To: Make Your Own Purim Baskets

Before and After: A.J. Jacobs, Bronze Age and Now Hello. Welcome to my guest-blogging stint.

I'm going to be blogging about my Judaism-heavy new book The Year of Living Biblically.

I wrote up an official introduction and everything. Which I'm pasting here:

For a long time, I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world. The potential for abuse too high. I figured it would slowly fade away like other archaic things. Science was on the march. Someday soon we’d all be living in a neo-Enlightenment paradise where every decision was made with steely, Spock-like logic.

As you might have noticed, I was spectacularly mistaken. The influence of the Bible -- and religion as a whole – remains a mighty force, perhaps even stronger than it was when I was a kid. So in the last few years, religion has become my fixation. Is half of the world suffering from a massive delusion, as Richard Dawkins and his posse say? Or is my blindness to spirituality a huge defect in my personality? What if I’m missing out on part of being human, like a guy who goes through life without ever hearing Beethoven or falling in love? And most important, I now have a young son – if my lack of religion is a flaw, I don’t want to pass it onto him.

Which is why I decided to dive in headfirst and try to understand the Bible from the inside. To try to follow every rule in the Bible. From the famous ones like the Ten Commandments and Love thy neighbor, right on down to the lesser-known ones – don’t shave your beard, don’t wear mixed fibers and, yes, stone adulterers. All 613 commandments (plus a handful of regulations from other parts of the Bible, such as the Proverbs and Psalms). I wanted to see how living by the biblical laws would change my life.

I chronicled my journey in my new book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally As Possible. It was an amazing year – life-altering, fascinating and very strange.

I found myself moved by the Prophets’ message of social justice, loving Shabbat, and, oddest of all for a lifelong agnostic, enjoying prayer. I also found myself wearing sandals, herding sheep and eating the occasional cricket.

I had a spiritual advisory board made up of rabbis of all varieties. They gave me a crash course in the oral law, and how it intertwines with the Bible itself. I did some mitzvahs in the traditional way – wrapping tefillin with the Orthodox, for instance. I embedded myself with groups ranging from Hasidic Jews to Israeli Samaritans. But there was also a big DIY element to my quest.

In addition to a spiritual journey, book is also an argument against fundamentalism. I became the ultimate fundamentalist to show the error of that approach. I hoped to show that fundamentalism and extreme literalism is necessarily selective, though fundamentalists won’t admit it.

In any case, every day for the next two weeks, I’m going to post something I learned on my odd and enlightening year. I’d love any feedback, of course. Here, the first installment:

Saying 'mazel tov' could, conceivably, get you executed.

I met with a leader of an ultra-literal branch of Judaism called Karaites. The movement was huge in the middle ages, but has now dwindled to 30,000 followers split between Israel and, weirdly enough, Daly City California. I told the Karaite "Mazel tov" on the completion of his doctorate. He shook his head. "Mazel tov means good constellation," he told me. And astrology is banned in the Bible (Leviticus 19:26). The punishment? Execution.

Sukkot is my favorite holiday. I love all harvest festivals (I’m also a Thanksgiving sucker) and the rustic autumn colors and smells of fall that we get during sukkot. I love eating in tight quarters with guests, and sukkah hopping in my super-frum Chicago neighborhood, where on some blocks every house has a sukkah. And I even love eating in the cold and the rain and the dark, and sleeping outside on wet grass.
Sukkot: Be Happy..Or else!
The thing about sukkot, though, is that by the time I’ve gotten through Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, I’m already emotionally and spiritually exhausted. And along comes a week long holiday that ends up feeling overwhelming more often than not. There’s so much going on, so much planning and cooking and building and decorating to do—it can feel like work.

But you know what’s great about sukkot? One of the main commandments going with the holiday is to be happy. Check out the JPS translation of Deut 16:13-15:

After the ingathering from your threshing floor and your vat, you shall hold the Feast of booth for seven days. You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son and daughter, your make and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow in your communities. You shall hold a festival for the Lord your God seven days in the place that the Lord will choose; for the Lord your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings and you shall have nothing but joy.”

Nothing but joy, people!

We’re supposed to rejoice with all of these random people, everyone from the highest to the lowest members of our community, and we’re supposed to have nothing but joy. (For more on this commandment, see Rabbi Rosen's blog).

Normally the commandments to feel a certain way annoy me, but I surrender to sukkot. On sukkot I laugh and sing zmirot and hang out with old and new friends. Nothing but joy is a tall order, but if there’s anything worth aspiring to, it’s that, right?

Here’s wishing you and your families nothing but joy, through sukkot and well into the New Year.

Jewish liturgy is all about redemption. The number of times we ask to be redeemed in shachrit alone is overwhelming enough that I have a hard time conjuring up what redemption would entail on any practical level. My only real indicator in terms of the realities of redemption comes from an oft-forgotten mitzvah, pidyon shvuyim, ransoming/redeeming the captive.

For information about the basis and complexities of pidyon shvuyim I direct you to a great discussion of this positive commandment over at MyJewishLearning. Here’s a brief rundown:

Jews are commanded to pay the ransom necessary to free any and all Jewish slaves or prisoners. There doesn’t seem to be many loopholes available, but the Talmud (Gittin 45a) comes in and makes two possible restrictions.
We’re not supposed to redeem captives for more than they’re worth, or help them escape, because of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world). The explanations given are that

1) we don’t want to put a financial burden on the community, and

2) we also don’t want to encourage the captors to take more captives in order to get more money.
Redemption: Isn't there a song about it, or something?
All of this has incredibly frustrating and fascinating implications in a world where Israeli soldiers have been captured and held for more than a year by Palestinian groups. The struggle to compromise halacha, the safety of the soldiers, and the safety of Israel is extremely difficult, and rabbis have been grappling with it for decades. The level of frustration, rises, of course, during a week when captives seem tantalizingly close to redemption. I can’t help picturing Gilad Shalit doing the interview circuit the way that Alan Johnston did yesterday. And what about the other two soldiers captured in Lebanon? How much are they worth, and what can we do to free them?

It’s nice to think of redeeming captives as a warm fuzzy mitzvah that everyone can get next to, but as we saw this week, sometimes freeing people isn’t helpful or good—it’s corrupt. I’m speaking, of course, of Scooter Libby’s commuted prison sentence.  The questions that this kind of situation brings up are important. Are we obligated to free Jewish captives even if they’re imprisoned for really good reason? What if we think they did something wrong, but the punishment is too harsh? That, of course, was Bush’s argument.

Where do our loyalties lie, and where SHOULD they lie? Am I supposed to sneak Jack Abramoff out of prison, but leave the West Memphis 3 and Kevin Cooper to rot in jail since they’re not Jewish? What about the millions of actual slaves all around the world? Do I have an obligation to them?

Actually, that last question is the only one I don’t struggle with much. I think I do have an obligation to redeem today’s slaves. (And yes, I know that people like to talk about how those of us with cushy lives in the Western hemisphere are slaves to technology and capitalism, but I’m talking about a more literal slavery here. Like, with chains and actual prices on peoples’ heads.) If you want to help, I recommend heading over to the Not For Sale website, where you can donate money, get educated on the problem and how widespread it is, and join the movement of others dedicated to ending human slavery in this generation.

In the face of all of the craziness surrounding Shalit, Johnston, Bush, Libby, and everyone else struggling with justice and captivity, it’s nice to have something I can do that will definitely make a difference. Redemption is suddenly real.

If you think that a mitzvah is a good deed then you've come to the right blog.

Let's start by addressing common misconceptions:

• A mitzvah is not a good deed.
• A mitzvah is not a commandment.
• A mitzvah is not helping someone.
• There are not 613 mitzvahs or mitzvot.

I'm not saying that a mitzvah isn't related to good deeds, but they are not the same.

So what is it already? A mitzvah is a certain type of transcendent connection that you create when you do some actions (such as good deeds) with the right frame of mind.

Let's take the most basic example:

You're walking outside and a stranger asks you for a handout. You give him a dollar. Did you do a mitzvah? Let's say for the sake of discussion that he uses the money to buy food to stay alive.

Survey says: You definitely did a good deed. But you didn't do a mitzvah!

It's not a mitzvah until you have in mind as you had him the dollar that you're doing a holy act that unites heaven and earth and imitates God as it were.

A person can spend their entire life helping others and never do a mitzvah. If you are doing good things without knowing it, without consciously choosing, it means that you had parents who gave you good habits. It doesn't make you a spiritually-oriented person.

Judaism says that you were put on this planet for a purpose. Actually, you have two purposes, your meta-purpose and your specific purpose. Your meta-purpose is the same as mine, it is the general purpose of human existence. Your specific purpose is the details of how you are going to realize that meta-purpose.

Our meta-purpose is to transcend the auto-pilot and perceive the hand of God in every transaction of Nature and of Man. What makes this constant awareness so hard is that we have these bodies that have physical cravings and distract us from the spiritual awareness. One solution to this problem is to unite body and mind by focusing like a laser on the transcendence of the body's action.

To put it simply, when I do a mitzvah with the proper focus - called kavanah - I am fulfilling my purpose in this life (in at least the general sense).

Now, how many mitzvahs are there? As I mentioned above, if you say 613, then you've come to the right blog to get your head fixed. Before I tell you the actual number, let's clarify one point: regardless of the number, the fact that there are a set number of mitzvahs means that there are x number of channels through which you can connect your physical existence to the Source in order that your existence be meaningful and not a pointless sham.

Each one of those channels is a unique opportunity to give your life transcendent meaning. So, for instance, giving tzeddakah gives you a different connection than not eating meat and cheese together.

But the uniqueness of a mitzvah compared to another mitzvah is only one facet. Another facet is the way you give tzedakah (or any other mitzvah). Your way is different from the way in which I do it. In order for us to bring the world into harmony, the world needs both your expression and mine of that mitzvah. If either of us fails to do a mitzvah, then our collective karma is lacking one connection that it would have otherwise had.

Therefore the true number of mitzvahs is really 613 times the number of Jewish people. Your mitzvahs affect me and mine affect you.

A mitzvah to the soul is like food to the body: it's good for you to do, but how you do it is just as important as what you do.

Below are three videos to compare and contrast. The first is a player piano recording of Scott Joplin himself playing "Maple Leaf Rag". It's undoubtedly a work of genius.

The second is a human being playing the same song. Which is more enjoyable for you to watch?

The third is a different human playing a different fast song.

What do you think? It seems to me that the contrast between these performances compares to doing a mitzvah on auto-pilot versus with all your heart and soul. You can test this: In the next 30 minutes, try to find a mitzvah to do, and do it with the awareness that you are creating a transcendental connection while you do it. Then let us know below on how it went.

Sol: Did not waste a secondI just found out that Sol Milgrome died last month, and it's very sad for me.  Because I hadn't thought of him in a long time, and now I wish I had.

I'm not certain that Faithhacker is really the place for me to eulogize a man I really didn't know well (a man you likely didn't know at all) but I want to believe that there's a lesson in this, a practical application of some kind. 

There must be... in a life lived well.

If nothing else, I'll offer what Sol might have offered, a bit of advice.  That saying "Good Shabbos" every week will add five to 10 years to your life. Which sounds silly, but Sol was 104 when he died, so maybe he knew something.

Mr. Milgrom's story began in the shtetle of Sokolov, Poland where he recalled poking pinwheel holes into freshly baked matzah. He built houses in Palestine from 1921 to 1929, having met his first wife, Taube, on a Zionist youth march. When the Great Depression rocked the world's economy, they came to Baltimore where she had family.

Knowing but five words of English, Mr. Milgrome became a grocer. During World War II, with rations diminishing his stock, he did manual labor for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyards.

He attended Cheder while the Czars reigned in Russia, before WWI.  He emigrated to Palestine in the fourth aliyah  and fought for the land. This man had a LIFE!

Unfortunately, I never got to hear those amazing stories.  I was always in too much of a hurry to get out of shul (my dad joined Sol in trying to build attendance at a dying synagogue many years ago, which is how we met him).

But what I did learn from Sol was how to keep learning.  Sol was not an observant Jew for most of his life. he was a fighter, a businessman, a father. It wasn't until he was 80 that he felt compelled to draw on his childhood in Poland, his days in the Cheder. It wasn't until then that he began attended shul regularly, began reading from the Torah on a regular basis.

So that is something to remember.

But more than that, what I learned from Sol, just this morning, is not to run out of shul so quickly.  To listen better.

Collect the stories you can.  Talk to the elderly.  It's not just a mitzvah... it's a chance to learn, and a good time.  I feel like a fool now for not asking more questions when I had the chance.  104!  I can't even imagine what he knew...

Want My Kidney?: It's a mitzvah!Posting about burial this morning got me thinking about death… which got me thinking about organ donation… which got me thinking about how messed up it is that Jews aren’t supposed to donate their organs. 

Or so I thought.

See, it has always been my understanding (here's where I embarass myself) that Jewish bodies need to be buried whole, so they can all rise up (Tehiyat Hameitim?) when the messiah comes and like, go bowling or something.  Because you can’t go bowling if you’ve donated your fingers for finger transplant, right?

But no!  It turns out that’s not true.  Not the bowling (not so shocking) OR the prohibition (slightly less shocking).  It turns out that I'm an idiot, and that organ donation is a mitzvah-- as long as you follow some rules.

For instance, did you know you can donate one cornea?  It would seem that blindness counts as death, so you can’t give both.  But losing one eye doesn’t really blind you, so you can give one. How wacky is that?

Slightly less wacky is that you can give an organ to save a life immediately. So while I might not be able to donate generally, in case someone needed my kidney… if you were dying in front of me, for want of a kidney, I could rip mine out and give it to you.

This seems to be in conflict with some other things I've found:

Judaism insists that no organ may be removed from a donor until death - as defined in Jewish law - has definitely occurred. This can cause problems concerning heart, lung and similar transplants where time is of the essence.

 but I'm assuming that this is a misunderstood detail. I'm assuming that you can give a non-essential organ to save a life, even if you're alive.

Anyone actually know the rules on this?

Many of the rules and regulations surrounding Jewish organ removal have to do with the Jewish definition of “death”, which is pretty interesting (and has to do with the brain stem). You can read more on the subject here, or here.

But all in all, I’m pleased to find myself completely wrong on this issue, even if it means I look kind of dumb.

For more information, if you want to look into Jewish organ donation, you can turn to the Halachic Organ Donor Society, and you’ll find a HUGE number of articles on the subject there too.

The first Jewish self help book...So, Faithhacker has been struggling a little with how to make this "a guide to practical spirituality." It's a lot easier to rant and mull than it is to offer concrete advice for people who want to get a little more "spirit" into their lives. Right?

Which brought me yesterday, to wish for a set of guidelines.

"Why isn't there a list of rules for "practical" religious life?" I thought to myself, as I ate muffin (blueberry). "Why isn't there an instruction manual??

Um. Duh! There is! Of course there is. And I'm an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.

Jews have, if nothing else, a text for every damn thing. There is a set of guidelines. 613 of them, to be precise. We call them mitzvot, and when I was a 7 year old sunday-school kid, I understood them to be a big fence, a list of specific instruction that would, if followed precisely, keep you from breaking the itty-bitty particulars of the most famous guidelines of all.

According to Wikipedia:

Rabbis are divided between those who seek the purpose of the mitzvot and those who do not question them. The latter argue that, if the reason for each mitzvah could be determined, people might try to achieve what they see as the purpose of the mitzvah, without actually performing the mitzvah itself.

Which makes sense... but for the purposes of this particular heathen, that's the interesting part.

And while some of them leave little to ponder (like #104-- Not to have intercourse with a beast (Lev. 18:23) (CCN117) a lot of them do provide an opportunity to rethink our daily lives.

For instance, I really like #203--a man should fulfill whatever he has uttered (Deut. 23:24) (CCA39).

This strikes me as important, and something we might generally call "follow through" and consider to be a mark of a "solid person" but not always think of as "religious."

But it is.

Think of all the promises you make each day. Think of all the whispered intentions. The moments when you say to your roommate, "I'll wash the dishes when I get home" or insist to your mom, "I promise I'll call Grandma tomorrow."

But then you don't. Not because you're evil, but because life moves fast and you forget things. But this rules, this guideline, this mitzvah-- it means you should think about what you say, and once spoken, you should treat your words as oaths. Because once they're out there in the world, other people count on them, believe in them, listen to them. And plan (and hope and feel) accordingly.

Like Bruce Springsteen (the greatest sage of all) once said (in the saddest song ever written), "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true... or is it something worse?"

I guess, according to this rule, it's both. A lie and a sin. Depending on whether you spoke your dream out loud. Which raises an itneresting question... for another day.

I'd like to know how people feel about this rule (especially lazy people, and people who talk way too much)... and maybe what people think of this set of rules in general (which is pretty clear on intermarriage, gay sex, etc) And I'd like to come back and consider these "guidelines" now and then... one by one. And discuss them, so I can learn them myself.