Dear Friend,

Deep into the summer, many of us have travel destinations on our minds these days. We thought we'd share with you one of our most popular articles from a few years ago that connects directly to a powerful lesson from the Torah portion this week. Chana and I wrote this article on a family trip to Italy a few years ago:

We were excited to be so close to one of the oldest Jewish Communities in the world in Rome. Since 69 CE, when Rome conquered Jerusalem and exiled her sons and daughters as depicted on the infamous Arch of Titus, Jews have lived here in an unbroken sequence.

Interestingly, the only place Jews were allowed to live in Rome for hundreds of years, was in the ghetto - a mere 900 feet by 600 feet - in which almost 10,000 Jews lived at its peak in the nineteenth century. This area was chosen for the Jews since it lay adjacent to the Tiber River which would flood the entire ghetto each year, rendering any investment and construction by the Jews futile. Needless to say, illness and disease spread through the ghetto at alarming pace. Ironically, today this awful ghetto is the most expensive real estate in all of Rome!

Adding insult to injury, the Pope decreed that Jews be forced to attend weekly Sabbath Sermons at the Churches outside the gates of the Ghetto. Legend has it that the Jews refused to listen to these heretical sermons by stuffing their ears with leftover wax from their Shabbos candles. Frustrated by their insubordination, the church engraved Biblical texts alluding to the stubbornness of the Jews above the doors of the Church as pictured here.

More than anything, I was fascinated by the majesty and splendor of the magnificent Shul in Rome, built soon after the Ghetto was abolished in 1870. A massive draw for tourists to this very day, yet still very much in use, this beautiful Shul serves as a monument of Jewish resilience through the harshest of times. Though they weren’t allowed to build its dome taller than that of the church, the Roman Synagogue’s dome was slightly lower than that of the Sistine Chapel. Once the Vatican seceded from Italy in 1929, the Dome of the Roman Synagogue became the tallest dome in all of Rome, towering above those of its more than 900 churches!

The inside of the dome tells a fascinating story: As seen in the picture, the dome is decorated with a rainbow, two evergreen trees and two palm trees. The rainbow, which recalls the oath G-d made to Noah never to flood the earth again, was very meaningful to the Roman Jewish Community that was flooded each year by the Tiber River.

The Evergreen trees were one of the symbols of the Roman Empire. Like the Evergreen tree which is always in season, the Romans believed themselves to be immortal. Like the pine cones spread seeds of new trees, the Romans believed themselves to be ever expanding. And like the Evergreen, which allows nothing to grow under its branches as it sucks all the water for itself, the Romans would completely dominate all peoples that came under their wing.

So why would the Jews include these Roman symbols of power, immortality, and expansion in their new Shul?

The answer lies in the two palm trees - symbols of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. When the Bible speaks of Israel being blessed with seven special fruits in the Torah portion this week , the last of the blessed fruits is honey. The Talmud clarifies that this "honey fruit" refers not to the honey of bees, but to the honey of date palms. 

Honey is the longest lasting substance known to mankind. Honey has been found in the catacombs beneath the pyramids four thousand years later and it's still edible! In response to the Roman Empire’s aspirations for immortality, the palm trees on the dome of the Roman Synagogue pay homage to the truly eternal people - the Jewish People.

Evergreens can last a long time, but honey is forever. The millions of tourists visiting Rome each year all see the broken down ruins of this ancient empire, washed away by the sands of time and rendered irrelevant by the vicissitudes of millennia. But those who visit the Roman ghetto find no ruins of the Jewish People - instead they find six (!!!) kosher restaurants in the ghetto, which spill out throughout the piazza due to the overwhelming amount of patrons. Without a prior reservation, you can’t get a seat at these delicious establishments that serve kosher food on the highest level.

As our children ran happily through the ruins of Roman coliseums, walkways and arches, tzitzis and yarmulkes flying in the wind - Chana and I smiled at each other, knowing that the dream of the builders of the Roman Synagogue had been fulfilled. The palm tree had indeed outlived the evergreens - Judaism is flourishing and the only Romans to be found are Israelis dressed in costume at the Coliseum trying to make a few bucks in photo ops!

Within our own city too, lies the secret of Jewish immortality. Palm Beach speaks of the eternity of the date honey. The palm tree is our special connecting to the land of Israel and the eternal people of Israel. Everyone likes to make a good investment that provides solid returns. Let us meditate upon the secret of the date palm and make sure to invest our resources in the best investment known to mankind, the one that has outlived all its peers, the holy Torah and the Jewish People!

Wishing you a Shabbos sweet as honey, 

Rabbi Dovid & Chana Vigler
Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens
6100 PGA Blvd, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
JewishGardens.com  | 561.624.2223

NEXT WEEK AT CHABAD

Sunday
7:30am Minyan
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8:00pm Schmooze Radio on 95.9FM or in Long Island at 103.9FM  

Monday
7:30am Minyan
8:30am Mens Torah Discussion
2:00pm Schmooze Radio on 900AM

Tuesday
7:30am Minyan
8:30am Mens Torah Discussion

Wednesday
7:30am Minyan
8:30am Mens Torah Discussion

Thursday 
7:30am Minyan
8:30am Mens Torah Discussion

Friday 
7:30am Minyan 
8:30am Mens Torah Discussion
7:44pm Light Shabbat Candles
7pm Friday Night Services  (7pm through the month of Augus)

Shabbos
9:30am Shabbat Service
10:30am JKidz Shabbos Program
12:00pm Kiddush Luncheon
 

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It Happened Once 
Preemptive Child Protection
by Tzirel Weinbaum

In 1990, when I was passing through New York — on my way home from Toronto where I was invited to speak at a women’s convention — I went to see the

Rebbe as he was giving out dollars for charity. I stood in that very long line because there was someone who desperately needed the Rebbe’s blessing, and I wanted to use this occasion to ask for it. I was very nervous that when I reached the head of the line I would be so in awe of the Rebbe that I’d be rendered speechless, and I kept reciting Psalms to give myself courage.

When I finally arrived in front of the Rebbe, I somehow managed to verbalize my request, giving the name of the person on whose behalf I was requesting the blessing.

However, the Rebbe dismissed my request with a wave of the hand, as if to indicate that a blessing for this person was not necessary. Instead, he handed me three dollars and said that these were for my children.

When I walked away, I burst into tears because what I had come for was a blessing for someone – and that blessing I didn’t receive! What I received instead was three dollars for my children — of whom there were more than three — and they were all just fine, thank G-d; they didn’t need intervention. Or so I thought.

But when I returned to England and greeted my children, a very strange thing happened. The kids collected the presents I had brought back for them and ran off to play. They were playing a tag game called Keystone which involved running outside around the house and up to the front door which was “Keystone” — whoever reached it first, slammed into the door, yelled “home” and was the winner.

Moishie, one of my sons, came running up to the front door and, while slamming “home,” put his arm straight through the glass panel. And then, when he pulled his arm back, he caught it on a jagged piece of glass which ripped it wide open.

We rushed him to the hospital, where they had to operate on his arm. Afterwards, the doctor came out shaking his head. “Your son missed his artery by a fraction of a millimeter,” he said. “All I can tell you is that you must have somebody up above pulling strings for you.”

I understood that this was the result of the blessing that accompanied the first of the three dollars that the Rebbe gave me, and I got very nervous wondering what might happen next.

The arm injury happened on Tuesday. On Friday morning, my oldest son, Shimmy, was delivering bundles of the L’Chaim leaflet to the various synagogues in the area. He made the deliveries on his bike, and it usually took him until about a half hour before the onset of Shabbat to return home. But he didn’t come home as usual. Instead, the doorbell rang, and I found a man standing on my doorstep holding a half a bike in his hand, with Shimmy next to him.

The man was clearly upset. “I am so sorry,” he said, “I came around the corner and I didn’t see him ... I knocked him off his bike.”

My sole concern was for Shimmy, but he assured me that he was fine. So I told the man he could leave.

Unfortunately, by nightfall it was clear that Shimmy was not fine, and we asked a doctor friend who lived up the road to come in and see Shimmy.

He examined Shimmy and asked him to describe the accident in detail. After hearing his account, the doctor said, “You were lucky that the pedal was up during the collision, because otherwise your foot could have been smashed just like the bike was. As it is, your leg is not even broken. It’ll be sore for a few days, but just keep putting ice packs on it and thanking G-d for this miracle.”

Shortly thereafter there came a third incident involving another of my children which I don’t recall exactly. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as either of these two, but it taught me a lesson: When the Rebbe tells you that you don’t need a blessing for something, rest assured you don’t need a blessing. However, when you do need a blessing, the Rebbe will make sure that you get it.

The power of the Rebbe’s blessings was driven home to me when my eleventh child, Levi, was born in 1988. During labor, I broke two vertebrae in my spine. At first, I had no idea what had happened, just that I had a lot of pain in my back — in fact, so much pain that I could hardly lift the baby or move about properly. The pain was relieved somewhat when I was lying down, but a mother can’t function lying down!

I returned to the hospital, reporting just how crippled I felt and how difficult it was for me to care for my children. The doctors were not at all sympathetic — they said, “If you have so many children, this is what you must expect.” They even predicted that I would probably end up with a prolapse of the spine and would have to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

Needless to say, I was very upset, and so when I learned that somebody from our community in London was going to New York, I implored this person to ask the Rebbe for a blessing that I recover.

The Rebbe gave his blessing along with instructions that we check our mezuzahs.

My husband took down all the mezuzahs. He put each one separately in an envelope, writing down which room each one came from, and he took them to the scribe to be checked.

This was at least six months after Levi was born and, by this time, the pain was the worst when I was sitting down. So imagine my surprise that the scribe found one mezuzah scroll to be defective — the one from the kitchen where I spent much of my time — with the backs of the letters broken in the words b’shivticha b’vaysecha, which means “when you sit in your house.”

Of course, we immediately replaced that scroll, and then my back slowly got better. Not only didn’t I suffer from a prolapse of the spine as the doctors had predicted, but I went on to give birth to three more children: Mushky, Shmulie and Mendel.

I consider them to be the Rebbe’s children, as they may never have been born were it not for the Rebbe’s blessing.

~~~

It's Good to Laugh

One has a cross in front of him; the other one the Star of David. Many people go by and look at both beggars, but only put money into the hat of the beggar sitting behind the cross.

A priest comes by, stops and watches throngs of people giving money to the beggar behind the cross, but none give to the beggar behind the Star of David.

Finally, the priest goes over to the beggar behind the Star of David and says, "My poor fellow, don't you understand? This is a Catholic country; this city is the seat of Catholicism. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with a Star of David in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who has a cross. In fact, they would probably give to him just out of spite."

The beggar behind the Star of David listened to the priest, turned to the other beggar with the cross and said: "Moishe, look who's trying to teach the Goldstein brothers about marketing."