avakesh

Hinduism's Message to the Jewish People

A new documentary on Sholom Aleichem

A Lithuanian Yanuka (please read more)...

Akiane Kramarik is a child of a Lithuanian mother and an American father who is a self-taught painter. She had her first vision at age 3, which is not all that unusual ( Miriam Millhauser reports that she had a spiritual vision at age 4).  However, Akiane states that God has given her the visions and abilities to create her artwork, which is unusual for her family, considering both her parents were atheisst at the time (they later converted to Christianity on account of Kramarik's paintings and visions). Not clear is she herself is a Christiain or a loose non-Trinitarian monotheist. Kramarik started drawing at the age of four, advancing to painting at six, and writing poetry at seven. According to Kramarik, her art is inspired by her visions of heaven, and her personal connection with God. Kramarik's art depicts life, landscape, and people.

What is interesting is that her brother has similar abilites, as well as what appears to be special ed and medical issues. Twice in one family makes you wonder.

That children can have visions and express truths is well accepted in Kabbala and the Zohar even has a section called "Yanuka (Balak)". I believe that Mishpacha's Kolmus in June 2011, (20) 362 reviewed the topic. There are basically two approaches: these children are great souls who have a minor blemish that stained them in the previous life and they come down to complete their rectification by sharing mystical teachings with others. The other approach is that they are perfect souls sent down expressly to teach certain truths.  The article discussed the Zoharic Yanuka of Parshas Balak and similar examples throughout history. I should add examples that the article missed: the case personally investigated by R. Menashe Israel and reported by him in Nishmas Yisroel and the maiden who prophesized in Maase Rav of the Vilna Gaon ( he advised that she be married off and her prophesies stopped).The topic of gilgul into non-Jews is also quite complex and I do not know Akiane's true genealogy.

 

 Bibliography

• Akiane Kramarik, (2006). Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry. Nashville: W Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8499-0044-1. 
• Akiane Kramarik, (2006). Akiane My Dream is Bigger Than I: Memories of Tomorrow. Artakiane.llc. ISBN 0-9778697-0-9.

 

About Nevuat Hayeled

 

Teimani Chinuch

A Dvar Torah and a Mussar Vort from Corey Booker

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Here is the mussar vort.

False Memories

I saw this quoted in Mishpacha:

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Mark Twain
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

Moral: Some of the terrible things we remember did not really happen as we remember them.

Our perceptions and our rmemories are largely under our control.

 

Overheard: So few Jews

Kid( 8 years-old, walknig home from shul): Tatty, Mommy was baking challa, and, and , she was talking to some lady on the phone and she said that there are so few Jews in the world and we should all stick together.

Father, somewhat distracted: Yea...

Kid: Are there more Jews than Goyim in Monsey?

Tatty, beginning to focus: I don't know, probably, I think so.

Kid: How about in New York.

Father: Many more goyim then Jews.

Kid:... in the world?

Father: Oh, many more than Jews, There are very few Jews in the world.

Kid: But Totty, that's not fair!

Father, thinking: Well, it's like this... How many teachers do you have in your class?

Kid: Two

Father:...and how many children?

Kid: twenty four

Father: so, how is that fair...?

Kid: I don't know

Father: it's because you don't need so many teachers... A few teachers can teach a lot of kids.

Kid: I understand.

Father, on a roll, animated, voice rising: So, Hashem said that we should be Ohr Lagoyim, a light to the nations. We should teach them about Hashem and how to be good people, and that is why there are only this few Jews.

Kid: Uhum...

Father: It's like the Challah that Mommy baked. Was there are lot of yeast in it?

Kid: No, just a pinch. If there is too much, it doesn't taste good.

Father, smiling: So that's how it is. You don't need much yeast to raise and elevate the dough. The same way you need only a small number of Jews to raise and elevate humanity!

Kid: What's ...humanity? 

 

 

Kids have changed, parents have changed

We strove to see that our children would have what we had missed. But, unfortunately, in our great enthusiasm, we forgot the ultimate goal and the wisdom of restraint. It is our own fault that a chasm opened up between us and our children.

For us, obedience to the commands of our parents was sacred. But now we find ourselves required to obey our children and submit ourselves completely to their will. In the past we were required to hold our tongues and remain silent before our parents. Now, we are to remain silent before our children. This is even harder. We listen silently, filled with joy and pride when our children tell us of their lives and their ideas. Our admiration for our children made them egotists and tyrants. The medal of western culture has an obverse side for us Russian Jews; in taking on Western European civilization no other people has given up all rememberance of its tradition so irrrevocably

 

Pauline Wengeroff(ca. 1908)

 

from here, p. xiv

Tsamah Lcha Nafshi: Nusach Matisiahu

Luis de Torres

 

Luis de Torres(died 1493), was born as יוסף בן הלוי העברי, Yosef Ben Ha Levy Haivri , (”Joseph the Son of Levy the Hebrew”). As a Marrano, he  was Christopher Columbus’s interpreter on his first voyage and the first person of Jewish origin to settle in the New World, in Cuba.

While still a Jew, de Torres served as an interpreter to the governor of Murcia due to his knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Portuguese. In this capacity, he mediated between Jewish, Arab and Spanish communities. Once the Jews were expelled, there was no farther use for his services and  de Torres converted to Catholicism shortly before the departure of Columbus’s expedition, which was also the deadline for converting or leaving Spain in the Edict of Expulsion. Columbus thought that a skilled interpreter will enable him to communicate with the people whom he expected to find at the end of his voyage, to speak to the Jewish businessmen  in Asia or because the believed that he might find the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. He came off on the coast of San Salvador, Bahamas and brought back gifts of wood and tobacco leaves. Not knowing what they were, Columbus disposed of them.

After arriving at Cuba,  Columbus sent de Torres and the sailor Rodrigo de Jerez for an expedition inland on November 2, 1492.  They did not find the Great Khan but they did report on the native custom of drying leaves, inserting them in cane pipes, burning them, and inhaling the smoke. Rodrigo brought the habit of smoking back to Spain and was imprisoned by the Inquisition for three (some say seven) years. By the time he was released, smoking became common in Spain.

When Columbus set off for Spain on January 4, 1493, Luis de Torres was among the 39 men who stayed behind at the settlement of La Navidad founded on the island of Hispaniola, now Cuba. Coming back by the end of that year, Columbus learnt that the whole garrison had been wiped out by internal strife and by an Indian attack, which had occurred in retaliation to the Spaniards’ abducting native women. The Indians remembered that one of the settlers had spoken “offensively and disparagingly” about the Catholic faith, trying to dissuade anybody from adopting it. According to Gould(1), this man may have been de Torres, who had probably not converted voluntarily. One must remember, however, that 5 Marranoes in total sailed with Columbus.

The Luis de Torres Synagogue in Freeport, Bahamas is named after Luis de Torres, and there is a great amount of traditions on his life. The most wide-spread one, which can be found in the Encyclopedia Judaica and similar reference books, affirms that he became in his latter days a wealthy and honored landowner in the West Indies. This version goes back to Meyer Kayserling’s book Christopher Columbus and the participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries (1894). In fact, Kayserling confused de Torres with another Spanish explorer who in 1514 was granted an estate and Indian slaves in Cuba.

The story of de Torres addressing an Indian crowd, who sometimes smoked tobacco through their noses, in Hebrew after Columbus’s first landfall on San Salvador is a product of novelists’ imagination. De Torres is also believed to have discovered the turkey and named it after the Hebrew tukki (parrot) of the Bible. Still another legend has him return to Spain and smoke tobacco there, which led to his being accused for witchcraft by the Inquisition.

Without mentioning de Torres’s Jewish origins, some Islamic websites have claimed the participation of “an Arabic-speaking Spaniard” in Columbus’s Atlantic crossing as a proof for the antiquity of Arab American history. The legendary San Salvador speech is said here to have taken place in Arabic. These conjectures have been given credentials in an article by Phyllis McIntosh in the U. S. State Department’s publication Washington File (August 23, 2004): “It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.”

(1) Alicia B. Gould y Quincy, "Nueva lista documentada de los tripulantes de Colón en 1492: Luis de Torres"

The facts in this post have been gathered from various publications and web sites during my research on a related topic.