World of Belz

With Passover looming close, less than a week away, one of the things Jewish consumers worldwide will be looking for is their bitter pickings – what they will be using for Maror for the Seder. In the old Marrano days, many a tale was told of Jews finding their fellow compatriots by looking at which person was buying the bitter things in the fresh produce selection right before the Passover holiday. Jewish custom called for a bitter herb of some sort to be served on Pesach . The question remains, what bitter herb was it that was being bought and what qualifies as the traditional Maror? In Jewish heritage, the place to go to for explanation of Jewish laws was the compendium of Oral Law that first began as the Mishne and then expanded into the Talmud. Regarding the Maror, we turn to Pesachim (39) where the law is explained that Maror is a plant that features sap, has somewhat of a color tinge of grayish and is bitter. It is definitely a veggie and cannot be a fruit product. Many ...

Supposing you are in a synagogue and someone says, “they’re taking the Torah out now” just know they are referring to a scroll of parchment on which the Five Books of Moses is written. It is written by hand, with a quill, and the entire time that the person is writing it, his thoughts must be of G-d. Supposing after Belz synagogue you went to visit some friends, and they say, “let’s learn some Torah.” They are not necessarily referring to that scroll of parchment we just talked about above. Torah, in this context, can mean anything from the gamut of Written and Oral Jewish law, history and thought, or any of the further philosophies and insights that later rabbis wrote. If that isn’t weird enough, you might then go to a class to learn, and the lecturer might say, “that’s Toras Moshe m’Sinia” meaning that is a law that goes way back to the giving of…Torah. "So, do we now know what Torah means? Not really. It seems it can mean so many different...