💡 Think:
This Shabbat is called Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of the Vision. Simply, the name was chosen because of words of the Haftarah - the Vision of Isaiah, read this week in synagogue. Famously, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev compared the vision of this Shabbat, on the eve of Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the year, to a pre-game for the world to come. On this Shabbat we are shown a vision of the Third Holy Temple, a sneak peak at the coming attractions.
Now, I can not speak for any of you, dear readers, but I for one have never seen a vision of the holy Temple in my dreams. Not on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av and not any other particular weeks.
This revelation is not one (necessarily) of an actual G-dly Temple in a dream. Rather it’s a spiritual revelation, one that speaks to the pure essence of our souls. It’s the sudden, unexplained yearning to connect to our Jewish souls, the deep desire to find the inner voice and let it cry out.
The experience of the Jewish exile, is one not just of physical diaspora, but a spiritual dysphoria as well. It’s the extended sense of disassociation from our inner selves.
According to physicist Isidor Rabi1, the child of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, his friend J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Atom bomb, was "a man who was put together of many bright shining splinters,” who "never got to be an integrated personality." What prevented Oppenheimer from being fully integrated, Rabi thought, was his denial of a centrally important part of himself: his Jewishness.
As the physicist Felix Bloch, echoing Rabi, once put it, Oppenheimer "tried to act as if he were not a Jew and succeeded well because he was a good actor." And, because he was always acting ("you carried on a charade with him. He lived a charade," Rabi once remarked), he lost sight of who he really was. Oppenheimer had an impressive and wide-ranging collection of talents, abilities and personal characteristics, but where the central, united core of his personality ought to have been, Rabi thought, there was a gap and so there was nothing to hold those "bright shining splinters" together. "I understood his problem," Rabi said, and, when asked what that problem was, replied simply: "Identity."2
This Shabbat is the Shabbat of integration, where we can recenter and reconnect our spiritual core with our outside selves.
So when you close your eyes tonight, listen to that voice, let it speak to you. Shabbat Shalom.
🏃 DO:
🍎 Join our bespoke Rosh Hashanah meal, Friday, September 15th. Welcome in the Jewish new year with a sumptuous meal.
🐟 Hear the shofar, take part in the tashlich ceremony - join us for our annual Rosh Hashanah experience on Sunday, September 17th at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden!
🤖 Snap Shalom + Tech Tribe bring their latest curated conversation: AI & IP in Jewish Law. At SNAP NYC, August 30th!
Need a pushka? Get your Tech Tribe ARK
🎉 Mazel:
Mazel Tov to dear friend of Tech Tribe, Stephanie Wilchfort on becoming the new president of the Museum of the City of New York!
📈 Invest:
Invest in Tech Tribe, join the #ChaiSociety!
Do you have a startup, announcement or message you’d like to share? Get your message seen by hundreds of people in Tech and Digital media!
📚 Read:
👍 Ask the Rabbi: Can Emoji Be Legally Binding?
🕯️ Bodo-Elazar, the Dark-Ages Convert
🪆 ‘Barbie’ director wants viewers to ‘feel like I did at Shabbat dinner’.
🔥 Lit:
This week, light Shabbat candles in NYC at
For Shabbat candle-lighting time in your area click here.
😍 Fave:
Like what you saw? Want more? Please feel free to forward this email far and wide!
Support Tech Tribe’s mission to build community and curate epic experiences for young Jews in tech and digital media!
Follow us on Social: Twitter | Facebook| Instagram
Find out if your company does employee matching! We’re now listed on Benevity YourCause and Bright Funds!
Tech Tribe is an affiliate of Chabad Young Professionals Tax ID 82-2619676
Rabi was the child of Polish immigrants, unlike Oppenheimer who came from Polish Jews. He was proud of his Jewish inheritance and happy to define himself in terms of it. Though he had no religious beliefs, and never prayed, he once said that when he saw Orthodox Jews at prayer, the thought that came into his mind was: "These are my people.”
From Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk