Ba'al Teshuva

It's a Thursday, I'm tired, I'm in the yeshiva (yes, this is before the college started) so I went to my room to lie down. You know it's a bad sign when the rabbi decides to go all the way up to the fifth floor to wake you up. He was the annoyingly cheery guy who missed his calling as an elementary school, or kindergarten teacher.

"Hey Michael, we have a lecture now, I think you should come?"

I'm waking up, and frightened as his face is not what I generally see when I wake up. "OK. What's the lecture on?"

" ��� ����� {Para Aduma.}"

"^Lovely.^" I rolled out of bed, (bad thing to do when you're on the top bunk.) put on a shirt and groggily went downstairs.

��� ����� {Para Aduma}, was the red heifer, the cow that had to be completely red, or less than three non-red hairs, never worked up until the point of three years old, and then brought to the temple where it would be burned and reburned until all that remained was ashes. The ashes were then used and sprinkled on the heads of people who wanted to be purified. One cow's ashes were for one reason or another, able to last the children of Israel for five hundred years.

Shlomo Hamelech, King Solomon, who was supposedly the smartest man in Jewish history due to a wish granted from God, said that he could understand the point of every commandment-except the red heifer.

Things haven't changed much since.

Actually, my Yeshiva went all out. They brought in the Rabbi who is near the top in the group who are trying to build the Third Temple. Well, no, they're not building The Third Temple, they are getting everything ready so that when the Mashiach (Messiah) comes, the people will know somewhat of what to do. (The plans for The Third Temple, as it stands, include a [holy?] television set.) In any case, when you go to The Third Temple Institute in Jerusalem, it is this Rabbi who did the English video and wrote half of the books in their gift shop, that came and spoke to us.

Even with his expertise, he could only talk about the divine red bovine for about twenty minutes. After that, being Machon Meir, he went into propoganda\brainwash mode. The necessity of alliya, the need to serve, the idiocy of the left, etc. I argued, he got annoyed. Yosef turned to me and mouthed "just let him do it," so I sank back and watched people swallow his words without looking at the ingredients. He went on and on extolling the platforms supported by the Yeshiva or Mafdal (the religious\Zionist\Ash- kenazic party) and smashing the platforms, and leaving holes in his argument that everybody else had long since ignored.

Having completely extolled his own virtues, those of his party, and those of the yeshiva, he decided to pat the heads of his unquestioning listeners, and already knowing the reputation of the yeshiva, he went after the easy low road. "Now, I want to ask you, how many of you, baruch Hashem (thank God), are Balei Tshuva?" Balei Tshuva means literally, a man of repentance. It's more or less "Born Again." It's people who decided to become religious, after living non-religious lives.