 Welcome back to Community Matters, I'm Jay Fiedel and with me I have the honor of having with me a Rebbetson, Rebbetson Pearl Krasynchansky, the rabbi's wife, Rebbetson means the rabbi's wife. Thank you so much for coming down Pearl. My pleasure, thank you for having me Jay. We have a lot of things to talk about. And as a Rebbetson you know so much about what goes on in the community, what goes on in the Jewish larger community, and I want to talk to you about a number of things. Purim. Purim is what? Coming up right now, soon, and it's happening this week. Well Purim actually happened last week. Last week. Last week, Wednesday night and Thursday, because as you know every Jewish holiday begins from the night before, and that actually is taken from the account in the Bible in our Torah of the creation of the world, where it says it was evening and it was morning the first day, it was evening and morning the second day. So the Jewish calendar always starts with the night before. The Purim was Wednesday night and Thursday last week, so Jay allow me to present you with a belated Purim gift. One of our customs on Purim is that we give our friends and neighbors food gifts, two or three different kinds of foods, so we have here a pineapple to make it Hawaiian, and we have hamantaschen, which are the traditional three-quartered pastry, they're a little squashed, and just to make sure you enjoy it all, but don't get too happy, non-alcoholic martinelli. I like to give this stuff to the staff, but this time I'm taking it home myself. It's for you. Some of the chocolate rubbed off. Anyway, so this is the kind of gift you give on Purim, and I relish this kind of gift. Did you cook the hamantaschen yourself? Oh, true question, no, they're actually brought all the way from New York. Oh really? Yes, with my luggage. We have over 700 little hamantaschen that we brought in for the holiday, and which we sheared with the neighbor islands, as well as our own community here in Honolulu, Honolulu, I should say. I get care packages all the time from New York, and this is one alley up on the west side there on Broadway, and my family, they go and they send it in dry ice, and I have the bagels and the locks, and they're really, really good. I'm into that food. Nothing like New York kosher Jewish food. Yeah, but you're a great cook. You cook for so many events and so many people. You are widely known as a great cook, girl. I hope so. Please share that with my children. Thank you. Okay, so what else does Purim mean to you? What else does Purim mean to Chabad? Okay. So Purim, just in a 30 second recap, tells the story of how the Jewish people were almost annihilated and exterminated, just like in our own generation, the Holocaust. That was the tragedy of our generation, and 2,500 years ago, it was very real. The sword was hanging over their heads, a threat of annihilation by Haman, the evil villain, and the Jewish people were saved by Queen Esther, the heroine of the day. However, more than an interesting ancient tale and scripture, there's a very deep mystical teaching that teaches the Baal Shem Tev, the founder of the Hasidic mystical movement, taught. What's the Baal Shem Tev? The Baal Shem Tev was the rabbi and scholar and mystic who founded the Hasidic movement, which is the teachings of mysticism, the deeper essences of the Torah, of the Bible. And Chabad is part of that movement? Absolutely. Chabad was born in 1698 and passed away in 1761. And he founded the movement in 1726, and it has grown to be an international movement. In fact, the rabbi is flying around the world right now. It's very international for him. Correct. Absolutely. Which is why you get the poor substitute that you have. We're very happy about that. Thank you, Jay. So the Baal Shem Tev taught the deeper meaning of there's an injunction or a law that you have to read the book of Esther, the story of Esther in chronological order. But the word that's used for reading it in order actually literally means backwards. In other words, whoever reads the story backwards has not fulfilled their obligation for hearing the story, which we're supposed to do twice on poor ones at night, once during the day. So now why would anybody read the story backwards or even out of chronological order, right? Why would somebody read chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 7, chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 5? So the Baal Shem Tev explained what that actually means. And what that means is whoever reads the story has something backwards, ancient, like an ancient tale that happened to an ancient people and it has no contemporary relevance, hasn't gotten it, hasn't fulfilled their obligation of understanding what Purim is about. Now there are many, many messages in Purim. But one of them is that, you know, Cayman, the Amalekite, who was out to exterminate all the Jews. And he said clearly, he told King Akhashveresh, he told him, why? He said, there is one people scattered and dispersed throughout your lands. Don't forget that Akhashveresh was the king of the Persian Empire at that time. Persian Empire was the ruler of the known pieces of real estate on earth at that point. And that's going to be on the final exam. I hope you write that down. Akhashveresh. Okay. Sarah is the way it's written in English, but we pronounce it the Hebrew way as it is in the Magillah, the Book of Esther. So he ruled 127 countries. And Haman said, wherever they are, they're different. They were different clothes. They have a different language. They have different food. Let's get rid of them. And one of the messages, unfortunately, of the Magillah is that the Haman's are alive and well in every generation. That Amalek was not wiped out, as was the biblical command. And they arise in every country, in every state. And we're seeing a very frightening rise in anti-Semitism all over the world. You know, it's funny. I mean, I'm a child of World War II and the years that followed. And that's when I learned, so I went to Hebrew school and all that in the 50s. And the story at the time is repeated in so much literature was never again. Never let the Holocaust happen again. Never again. But you know what? It's questionable now whether that can stick. It's questionable that people in general agree that the Holocaust should never be repeated. Absolutely. Holocaust deniers who have horrible incidences of anti-Semitism. I mean, I've lived in the islands for almost 32 years, but I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. I mean, you can never tell from my accent, right? No, I can, because I'm from Queens, yeah. That was a joke. But where I'm originally from in Brooklyn, New York, there have been one incident after another, anti-Semitism. And it's just frightening that it's on the loose. And we have to look to the story of Esther. See what did the Jewish people do then? They turned to God. They prayed. They fasted. They observed the commandments. And that is our strength. You know, it says in the Torah, it says in the Bible, yadayim y'dayesav koko'yakav, that the voice of the voice of Jacob. And the hands are the hands of Esau. Esau fights with his hands. Jacob, the children of Jacob and Israel. Our weapons are our lips, our lips moving in prayer and Torah study and observance and connection to God. And I think this is really a message for all peoples is affirming your faith, getting closer to God, closer to your religion, closer to where you come from. And that is our protection. Seems like it's all the more important now. Absolutely. Yeah. There is even another teaching which is very beautiful connected to that, which teaches that Amalek can be sometimes within us. In other words, there is what's quote unquote the evil within us. The worst thing that can happen to a person is doubt, self-doubt. There is nothing as paralyzing, as destructive, as self-destructive as self-doubt. When we remove that self-doubt, there is no greater happiness than inner peace. So that's what we have to do away with also. Know what you're here for, what your purpose on this earth is, what your purpose, what God put your soul into your body on this planet to create a better place, a holy world, a kind world, a sacred world, by being a good person and being good to other people. And when you have that purpose in your life and remove that doubt from within, then you have that inner completion and happiness. But no, last week there was the Jewish Film Festival at the museum. And one of the movies, the movie I saw was the story of the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials by a prosecutor by the name of Ben Forens, who was really a great man. And his family taught, he's still alive, he's 99 years old, as of last week. And his family talked about what it was like at the dinner table when Ben Forens would come home. And he always asked them the same question. This is a apropos of what you were saying. He always asked them, what have you done to make the world better today? What have you done in service of you every day? Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. That's something we should each be asking ourselves. What are we doing on this planet? God put us here for a reason, and it wasn't to eat, drink, and be merry. You know? We've got to keep that in mind these days. Yes. So let's talk about the Torahs. Because this is a story worth telling. It was in the newspaper, but I think it's important that we tell the story now and that we tell what's going to happen about the missing, the lost, the stolen, who Torahs a few, what, a year ago it was. Yes. Yes. It was, I believe it was January 20th, if I have the date correctly, January 20th, 2018, sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning. And as you know, Jewish prayer services, in addition to the daily services, the Sabbath services are held Friday night and Saturday day. And we're there, that's our Sabbath, our Shabbat, and we were there. I was the last one to close up shop. I left at 10 p.m., and I know exactly what time it was because I was on the phone with my daughter in Israel, so I had the time recorded. I left at 10 p.m., locked the place. My husband comes the next morning for prayer service, and he calls me and he says, Peril, did you move the Torahs? I said, what? He said, did you move the Torahs? I said, why would I move the Torahs? He goes, because they're gone. He said, what do you mean they're gone? Like, I wasn't computing. He said, they're not there. I said, these were two, the two Torahs. The two Torahs, these are about had in the ark, the holiest books in the synagogue. This is the most sacred object in Jewish life. They're big, they're like this tall or taller, written on parchment, rolled up wooden handles with a velvet cover to them, closed in the ark, wooden ark that we had built by a dear friend, Robbie Jassel. And they were just gone Sunday morning, and that was extremely traumatic. And it was a personal tragedy and a tragedy for the entire community. I mean, all across the spectrum of observance and religiosity. People came out in support, we had a meeting afterwards, and my husband declared that we weren't going to let this get us down, and we were just going to move forward. And thank God we've raised the money to replace one Torah, and the second Torah is being donated very generously and graciously by a friend of ours from New Jersey, and we're having a big celebration, a community celebration on Sunday, April 7th. My apologies, I don't have the postcard here. At 12.30. At 12.30 p.m. it begins. It's going to get off maybe a little bit to a slow start, and then I would say at about 1.30 or so we're going to take those two Torahs, and we are proudly going to do what Jewish people have done for millennia, welcome them to the synagogue by taking them outdoors, and then escorting them in like a bride, you know, there's a wedding canopy just like at a Jewish wedding, a chupa wedding canopy, and we will be holding the Torahs and marching to live music. The city has, graciously, I want to give a shout out to Irene Bonnell of Department Transportation and Safety, who's helping us effect the closure of two lanes. My apologies to everybody driving down Atkinson Drive, Malchabound, but it's only going to be for an hour. That's beautiful. We're going to walk those two blocks with the Torahs and escort them back to the synagogue, back to the shoal and the temple, and give them a rousing welcome, because it's like a wedding for us. It's a joyous occasion. We'll be there. Thank you, Jim. We'll be there with cameras. We look forward to it. We want to get to singing, and you were talking about how people help to inscribe on the Torah. Yes. Right after this break, Pearl, I would like to talk about how you make a Torah, and how you inscribe on a Torah. It's very special. Absolutely. Pearl Krasnchansky, she's a Rebbitson, and the name of our show is As the Rebbitson Spoke. We're going to find out more about why we called it that, right after this break. Aloha. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show, and it's streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii, and they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here, so we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Like MacArthur, I told you we'd be back, and we're back. Pearl Krasynchansky and me, we're talking about things Jewish, we're talking about as the Rebson spoke, because she is the Rebson. How many Rebsons do you know? Okay, what is this with the Rebson as the Rebson spoke? Where are we getting that from? And can we sing the song from which it comes? Well, you can sing the song, because my voice ain't nothing to listen to. But this was your idea, Jay, so I'm going to give you the credit, not steal the credit, but there is an old Yiddish song, as the Rebbe asked, when the Rebbe eats, ale chasidim esin, or the chasidim eat. As the Rebbe danced, as the Rebbe dances. The members of the study group in the congregation. Yes, his chasidim, his disciples, they also dance as the Rebbe sloughed, and when the Rebbe sleeps, so do his chasidim. And so you came up with an innovative song as the Rebson spoke. The speech of the community between the Rabbi and his followers. Absolutely. And the interaction and the interplay. And as the Rebbe sloughed, sloughed naal chasidim. You don't do this very well. You got it, you got it. As the Rebbe esin, esin naal chasidim. And as the Rebbe danced, that means dance, dance naal chasidim. And as the Rebbe danced, and as the Rebbe danced, dance naal chasidim. I'm going to stop now. Close enough, close enough. OK, anyway, so now we know more about what a Rebbe esin is and why we call the show, as the Rebbe esin spoke. I just love that title. All right, so let's talk more about Torahs. How do you make a Torah? It's not that you send it to the printing press. Torah is a special object, a special sanctified object. Absolutely, they're very specific criteria, how it's done, and as much else in Judaism. This is the way it's been done for millennia. First of all, the Torah is not written on paper. It is written on parchment. Animal hide is taken and processed and worked over and prepared for being written upon. And this actually, again, has a deeper meaning, which is that we're taking something from the animal kingdom, which is on the hierarchy of existence, there's inanimate, vegetable, animal, human. And goes way, way back. Yes, absolutely. So we're taking something from the animal kingdom and we're elevating and uplifting it and sanctifying it by using it to write God's Word on it. Now, the person that writes it is also not just your average ordinary Joe. It's someone that we call in Hebrew a sofar, or a sofar-stom. So far as a scribe who's trained, they do need to take courses in writing the letters a very particular specific way, which has been handed down for thousands of years. Every aspect of this is very specified and particularized. So he doesn't write with a pen. He writes with a specific kind of quill. He writes with a particular kind of ink. This is not, you don't just take a ballpoint pen. And the letters are written, as we said, in a very particular kind of script, not even the kind that we see printed in prayer books, but they are all these what look like ornate little crowns. Also, markings. They're no vowels, so they're little markings that people who know how to read the Torah, it's called the cantalation. Or in Yiddish we say lane. They lane, they read from the Torah. They only know by these little marks under, above, on the side of different letters. The actual letters don't have vowels, so you really have to know how to do this to read. You have to have this memorized when you read from it. When the Torah reader reads from it for the congregation. And it is read. The Torah is read every Saturday on the Sabbath. Absolutely. You know, the Torah is called etz chayim hi lamach zikim ba. It is a tree of life for all those who hold on to it. In other words, the Torah gives us life and is a living, breathing entity. Like we said about the story of Purim, scripture, Torah is not an ancient artifact. It is something that informs, certainly us as orthodox slash ultra orthodox slash Hasidic Jews, it informs every moment of our lives. How we eat, how we sleep, how we dress, where we go, how we speak, all these things, ethics and rituals. And all these are informed by Torah law. And you carry, you carry the message. You know, in every age and every time, in all through the diaspora, the Torah has traveled with the Jews. It has stayed among the Jews. It has perpetuated, been perpetuated all these millennia. It's the five books of Moses. Yes, yes. It comes back from Moses coming down from the hilltop. We're talking serious stuff. Absolutely. Notwithstanding the times that our enemies tried to burn the Torah, censor the Torah, forbid our stunning the Torah, the Jewish people have taken seriously the mandate from God to be a light unto the nations. And the Torah is God's word. This is what Christians call the Old Testament. But in the original, in the Hebrew, we call it the Torah. Oh, the thing is that, even though not everybody in the world is a chassid, fact is that we all ought to appreciate the chassidim for the fact that they reserve the Torah for us. They go to such lengths to keep it sanctified. And so it was a tremendous, a tremendous disaster when the two Torahs were stolen. A real tragedy, but you guys have recovered from that. You've gotten two of them back, and that's really wonderful. And now on April 7th at 1230 on Atkinson Drive, you will have a huge, big celebration, a really heartfelt celebration for getting back with the Torahs. Oh, that's wonderful, Pro. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. It really is very meaningful. That loss was very difficult for us and replacing those Torahs. You know, that has been our source of life and light and inspiration, as you mentioned throughout the diaspora, throughout the centuries and the millennia. And as the basis of the three major world religions, the Torah holds a place of honor, I think for most of humanity. And this whole inquiry is really related to Passover too, isn't it? Because the Torah and Passover are deeply connected. Very much so. And Passover is coming up in April now. Absolutely. Can you talk about it and tell people what it is and how you celebrate? Sure. So the first night of Passover is, this year it falls out on April 19th. Every year the Gregorian calendar is different than the Jewish calendar. So it falls out on a different date. April 19th and April 20th are the first two nights of Passover. We celebrate by having a big Seder, a meal full of rituals that recreate and commemorate and celebrate the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt where they were slaves. And again, this is a story that has inspired millions throughout the ages. The story of how the Jewish people as slaves left Egypt and became free people, obviously with God's miraculous interventions. But in the exodus movie that they did, I believe in the 60s or what have you, and in popular culture, Moses always comes to Pharaoh and tells him, let my people go. But the last part of that phrase is usually cut off. What he actually said was, let my people go so that they shall serve me, speaking for God, so that they shall serve me on the mountain. In other words, the purpose of the exodus was not just leaving the slavery, but what were they going to? They were going to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God himself. Ten Commandments, which again, have been a pillar of morality and civilization for centuries, for millennia. And the Torah and Passover are deeply interlinked, of course, because Passover, we left Egypt. Why did we leave Egypt? So that we could not serve a human master, but we would serve God, our divine master. So again, the story of liberation resonates with everyone. It was for a reason. It was for a purpose. Absolutely, absolutely. It wasn't just leaving the shackles of slavery, but the Jews left Egypt. Ah, this is very touching, actually. So how do we celebrate Passover? It's a really interesting holiday. It's an interesting festival. It's an interesting meal or meals, as the case may be. What is special about these? I mean, this is a long answer, I know. Absolutely. You've got to summarize it for me, because it's very complicated, no? So I'll try to keep it brief. So Passover actually goes beyond the Seder. Most American Jews or contemporary Jews actually think that Passover's over with the first night. We have this big ritualistic dinner, and then all done with. Passover's actually an eight-day holiday. One of the hallmarks of Passover is we eat matzah, and we not only eat matzah for show, or for ritualistic and ceremonial reasons, but actually when the Jews left Egypt, they were there for 210 years, and they couldn't wait to go. And when it finally came time to go, the pharaoh told them, leave, now get out, and they left in the middle of the night. Actually, you chase them out in the middle of the night. By the time they left, I think it was daybreak, but they didn't have time to bake their bread. So they carried, the only things they were able to bake was these flat matzah cakes, and therefore we are enjoined in the Torah, the Bible, not to eat bread or any leavened food for eight days. So actually we don't make anything out of flour on Passover, except for the matzah itself. We use potato starch, or people grind up the matzah to make a flour-like substance, or almond flour, which is actually very in today, because we're not allowed any food with leavening, nothing that can rise. So none of our cakes or nothing has height on Passover because you have no yeast. None of the food, none of the foods that you eat can have the yeast. Correct. It strikes me that Passover is a holiday, a festival of remembrance, of remembrance how it was to be in bondage, remembrance how it was to be in Egypt, because the Haggadah is all about that, all the ritual is about that, and it teaches you every year at the Seder, or Seder is depending on how many you go to, about the history of the Jews in Egypt, they're leaving Egypt. And so over all these years, we don't forget what happened. Absolutely, I was just gonna add that as a post-script, that it's not just about remembering the past, and there's the connection with sperm again, but number one, remembering the past so that we can incorporate it into our lives today. And there are many messages of Passover, we're not gonna go through all of them now, or Pesach has to say. Now we'll have another show about it. Okay, that's great because it is a major holiday. It is a major holiday for sure. One of the two or three that American Jews who don't celebrate other holidays do celebrate Passover, but the liberation, as similarly to what we spoke about in Purim, there's external forces of bondage, and then there's internal forces. There you can be, and today's we can be enslaved to, doesn't have to be a human master. We can be enslaved to our iPhone, we can be enslaved to making money, we can be enslaved to the idea of fame and fortune. It's about freedom then. Absolutely, absolutely. Freedom to transcend the foundries that limit us, and come back to what I said earlier, to connect to the divine within us, and to the divine in the world. And Kabat has a big Seder at the temple of the synagogue, and a lot of people come, and I guess that's on your website, Kabatahauai.org. Absolutely, kabatahauai.com. Yes, we have two Saders, first night and second night. It's been years since my children experienced having a home Seder, which again is the hallmark of Passover, families get together. But it is very meaningful and it is important to have the children there. A lot of the rituals that are done at the Seder, which is the big Passover dinner. For the children. To around their curiosity. The missing matzah, the Afikoman matzah. The Afikoman, why do we have four cups of wine? We did potato or a vegetable in saltwater, and the children are meant to ask why, why, why? And it perpetuates the story. It perpetuates the story of liberty and freedom. Thank you so much for coming down. My pleasure, thank you for having us. This is Pearl of Kresen Jansky, the Rebitant of Khabar-e-Hawaii. Thank you so much. Shalom, aloha. Shalom, analoha, shalom.