User:Valley2city


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Wikipedia Vitae

This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This user's time zone is CST.

This administrator will consider reasonable requests to provide copies of deleted articles.

This user runs a bot, Rabbot (contribs). It performs tasks that are extremely tedious to do manually.

This editor is a Veteran Editor and is entitled to display this Iron Editor Star.

This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.

>10 ubxs

This user has created >10 userboxes.

This editor is a WikiGnome.

This user is a recent changes patroller with Twinkle!

This user believes that only articles need reflect a NPOV, and that displaying political, religious, or other beliefs using userboxes and user categories should not be banned.

This user scored 9732 on the Wikipediholic test (revision 285667092).

WikiProjects

This user participates in WikiProject Judaism.

This user participates in
WikiProject Israel.

This user is a member of the Jewish History WikiProject.

This user is a member of the Hebrew languages WikiProject.

This user is a member of the Jewish Culture Wikiproject.

C

This user participates in
WikiProject
Columbia University.

This user participates in
WikiProject California.

This user participates in
WikiProject The Simpsons.

HP

This user is a participant in the
Harry Potter Task Force.

This user participates in WikiProject Musical Theatre.

This user participates in
WikiProject Council.

Personal Vitae

This user is Jewish.

This user is of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.

This user is of Sephardi Jewish ancestry.

This user claims to be a descendant of King David.

This user observes Shabbat.

This user observes the dietary laws of Kashrut.

This user is left-handed.

Educational

AJU

This user attends or attended American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism).

This user is a teacher.

JTS

This user attends or attended Jewish Theological Seminary. The bush was not consumed.

C

This user attends or attended Columbia University.

BA

This user has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.

BA

This user has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Talmud & Rabbinics.

ישיבה

This user is a Yeshiva / Kollel / Seminary student.

Geographical

This user lives in, or hails from, Los Angeles.

This user lives in, or hails from,
New York City.

World-wide-web...ical

This user maintains a Facebook profile.

This user maintains a blog.

Personal not-so-Vitae

This user is skilled in the sacred art of Shofar blowing.

This user has an iPod.

This user is owned by one or more dogs.

G	This user is a Gryffindor.

This user reads between the lines.

Random Mild Accomplishments

ACADEMIC JOURNAL

This user has had his/her work published in an academic journal.

MAGAZINE

This user has had his work published in a magazine.

POEM

This user has had one of his poems published.

SHORT STORY

This user has had one of his/her short stories published.

Misc. Interests & Minor Beliefs

This user is interested in issues related to religious pluralism.

C₂H₅OH-1

This user drinks relatively infrequently. he is probably the better for it.

This user is opposed to online censorship.

Secondhand smoke is one of this user's pet peeves.

This user believes it is every citizen's duty to vote.

Entertainment

d'oh!

This user thinks The Simpsons is simply... excellent.

This user enjoys klezmer.

Phantom

This user is past the point of no return.

CYE

This user wants you to Curb Your Enthusiasm.

ent

This user rolls with Vince.

This user is Jack Bauer however, the preceding was a joke and most of us here on Wikipedia hate spreading false info.

J!

This user phrases responses in the form of a question.

AD	This user made a huge mistake.

Diet

This user obsessively drinks lots of Water and can be considered Aquaholic.

This user is dieting.

Aer

This user does aerobics.

This user eats salad.

This user eats sushi.

This user loves to eat cucumbers.

BAM!

This user believes that gaaahhhlic is a beautiful thing!

Languages

en

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

he-3

משתמש זה יכול לתרום ברמה מתקדמת של עברית.‏

yi-2

דער באַניצער רעדט אַ נישקשהדיקן ייִדיש.

es-2

Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel intermedio de español.

tmr-1

היא מיתהנאה משתעי בארמאה דתלמודא בבלאה בדרגא נחותא.

This user has an understanding of the Phoenician alphabet.

ase-1

This user can communicate at a basic level in American Sign Language.

grc-1

Ὅδε ὁ χρήστης δύναται συμβάλλεσθαι ὀλίγῃ γνώσει τῆς ἀρχαίας ἑλληνικῆς.

Java-2

This user is an intermediate Java programmer.

Oy

This user speaks Yeshivish.

en-us-ca

Dude, this person is totally a California English speaker.

...

This user would like to be able to speak many more languages.

About Me

I'm a rabbi and teacher, also involved in the catering industry, from Los Angeles, CA. I consider myself an expert on matters of Judaism, with a dabbling in the subjects, IRL, of the other WikiProjects (see sidebar) of which I am involved.

A Wikipedian Theology

When Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden they suddenly developed the ability to know things and to be self-aware. This came at the cost of mortality and decay, that humans would have to toil for their natural lives which would be drastically shortened from eternity to much less. Pain, sorrow, and death are introduced into the world, in exchange for the blissful innocent ignorance. I have posed the question to my students, friends, colleagues, and teachers that "if you were in the position of Adam or Eve and given the choice of whether or not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, knowing the ramifications, would you eat"? Nine times out of ten the answer I have received is "yes".

Increasing knowledge is one of the greatest things given to humanity. I do not believe that there is any sin in what Adam and Eve did. Rather, I believe God placed it in front of them so that they would eat of it. "The sum of human knowledge is the fear of God", writes Ben Sira. It is this for reason that I find Wikipedia so noble a cause and so vital a pursuit. One person cannot know even a small fraction of all knowledge; yet through this collaborative effort, perhaps we can get that much closer to true enlightenment.

And as Rabbi Yehuda ben Teima writes in Pirkei Avot 5:23, "Be bold as the leopard".

Words to live by

Assume good faith
Assume the presence of a belly-button
Don't stuff beans up your nose
Please do not bite the newcomers
No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
Staying cool when the editing gets hot
No angry mastodons
The world will not end tomorrow
Wikipedia is not...
The universe does not revolve around you
Words of Pessimism
Murphy's law: Anything that can go wrong, will
Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment
Hanlon's razor:Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

My contribution to Wikipedia

Besides being an administrator on the English Wikipedia (where I participate mainly in deletion in its various forums and responding to vandalism and vandals) I also participate in many Wikiprojects, namely those related to Judaism In these categories I have created and done very major overhauls in a number of articles (which I will enumerate in the future). I also bill myself as a wikignome (or maybe Obsessive-Compulsive, making tiny edits all over the place, whether considered minor or major. I also tend to follow up edits with other edits (usually more minor) including things I have forgotten after clicking the Save page button.

I am quite passionate about issues regarding Judaism and Israel and love to debate topics relating to these, but I also maintain a semblance of unbias as I write or edit articles on these topics. I think one of the most important things to remember is that Wikipedia is first and foremost is to be a verifiable encyclopedic wiki (it says so right above the Save page button) and it is one thing to be passionate about something (this motivates edits on said topics) but it is another to include your bias within the articles. I am a stickler for policy and will not hesitate to bring up questions about the verifiablity, POV, et al. of any article. I am highly intolerant of vandalism and I will quickly revert any that I see. I am Pro-IP Profiling and look first at changes on my watchlist for anonymous IPs as those tend to contribute more vandalism (A recent study of the WP:Vandalism Studies concluded that about 97% of vandals are IP users). As such I am also in favor of quicker semi-protection for pages that are either vandalized or edit-warred by anonymous IPs. For other me-related things, there are links in some of my userboxes if you decide to stalk me.

Though I live in the Pacific Time Zone, you will find me editing at odd hours (probably because I'm in grad school). You will not, however, find me editing (or manipulating electricity for that matter) on the Jewish Sabbath or holidays. I will usually have a header on this page during these times (but sometimes I will forget). Therefore, understand if I don't get back to you during these times. Otherwise, I am usually pretty quick on getting back to people who post to my talk page. Occasionally I can also be found on the Freenode IRC network on #wikipedia_en and in the admin channel, on as Valley2city.

Torah Portion of the Week

Weekly Torah Portion

Behaalotecha (בהעלותך)

Numbers 8:1–12:16

The Weekly Torah portion in synagogues outside of Israel on Shabbat, Saturday, 18 Sivan, 5785—June 14, 2025

“Is there a limit to the Lord’s power?” (Numbers 11:23.)

God told Moses to tell Aaron to mount the seven lamps so as to give light to the front of the lampstand in the Tabernacle, and Aaron did so.

God told Moses to cleanse the Levites by sprinkling on them water of purification, and making them shave their whole bodies and wash their clothes. Moses was to assemble the Israelites around the Levites and cause the Israelites to lay their hands upon the Levites. Aaron was to designate the Levites as an elevation offering from the Israelites. The Levites were then to lay their hands in turn upon the heads of two bulls, one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering, to make expiation for the Levites. Thereafter, the Levites were qualified for the service of the Tent of Meeting, in place of the firstborn of the Israelites. God told Moses that Levites aged 25 to 50 were to work in the service of the Tent of Meeting, but after age 50 they were to retire and could stand guard but not perform labor.

At the beginning of the second year following the Exodus from Egypt, God told Moses to have the Israelites celebrate Passover at its set time. But some men were unclean because they had had contact with a corpse and could not offer the Passover sacrifice on the set day. They asked Moses and Aaron how they could participate in Passover, and Moses told them to stand by while he listened for God’s instructions. God told Moses that whenever Israelites were defiled by a corpse or on a long journey on Passover, they were to offer the Passover offering on the 14th day of the second month — a month after Passover — otherwise in strict accord with the law of the Passover sacrifice. But if a man who was clean and not on a journey refrained from offering the Passover sacrifice, he was to be cut off from his kin.

Starting the day that the Tabernacle was set up, a cloud covered the Tabernacle by day, and a fire rested on it by night. Whenever the cloud lifted from the Tent, the Israelites would follow it until the cloud settled, and there the Israelites would make camp and stay as long as the cloud lingered.

God told Moses to have two silver trumpets made to summon the community and to set it in motion. Upon long blasts of the two horns, the whole community was to assemble before the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Upon the blast of one, the chieftains were to assemble. Short blasts directed the divisions encamped on the east to move forward, and a second set of short blasts directed those on the south to move forward. As well, short blasts were to be sounded when the Israelites were at war against an aggressor who attacked them, and the trumpets were to be sounded on joyous occasions, festivals, new moons, burnt offerings, and sacrifices of well-being.

In the second month of the second year, the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle and the Israelites set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai to the wilderness of Paran. Moses asked his father-in-law (here called Hobab the Midianite) to come with the Israelites, promising to be generous with him, but he replied that he would return to his native land. Moses pressed him again, noting that he could serve as the Israelites’ guide.

They marched three days distance from Mount Sinai, with the Ark of the Covenant in front of them, and God's cloud above them by day. When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say: “Advance, O Lord! May Your enemies be scattered, and may Your foes flee before You!” And when it halted, he would say: “Return, O Lord, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands!”

The people took to complaining bitterly before God, and God ravaging the outskirts of the camp with fire until Moses prayed to God, and then the fire died down.

The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving and the Israelites complained, “If only we had meat to eat! Moses in turn complained to God, “Why have You . . . laid the burden of all this people upon me? God told Moses to gather 70 elders, so that God could come down and put some of the spirit that rested on Moses upon them, so that they might share the burden of the people. And God told Moses to tell the people to purify themselves, for the next day they would eat meat. But Moses questioned how enough flocks, herds, or fish could be found to feed 600,000. God answered: “Is there a limit to the Lord’s power?”

Moses gathered the 70 elders, and God came down in a cloud, spoke to Moses, and drew upon the spirit that was on Moses and put it upon the elders. When the spirit rested upon them, they spoke in ecstasy, but did not continue. Eldad and Medad had remained in camp, yet the spirit rested upon them, and they spoke in ecstasy in the camp. When a youth reported to Moses that Eldad and Medad were acting the prophet in the camp, Joshua called on Moses to restrain them. But Moses told Joshua: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord put His spirit upon them!”

A wind from God then swept quail from the sea and strewed them all around the camp, and the people gathered quail for two days. While the meat was still between their teeth, God struck the people with a plague.

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses, saying: “He married a Cushite woman!” and “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?” God heard and called Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to come to the Tent of Meeting. God came down in cloud and called out to Aaron and Miriam: “When a prophet of the Lord arises among you, I make Myself known to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout My household. With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness of the Lord. How then did you not shrink from speaking against My servant Moses!” As the cloud withdrew, Miriam was stricken with snow-white scales. Moses cried out to God, “O God, pray heal her!” But God said to Moses, “If her father spat in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of camp for seven days.” And the people waited until she rejoined the camp.

Hebrew and English text
Hear the parshah chanted
Commentary from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University (Conservative)
Commentaries from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Conservative)
Commentary by the Union for Reform Judaism (Reform)
Commentaries from Project Genesis (Orthodox)
Commentaries from Chabad.org (Orthodox)
Commentaries from Aish HaTorah (Orthodox)
Commentaries from the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (Reconstructionist)
Commentaries from My Jewish Learning (trans-denominational)

The Weekly Torah portion in synagogues in Israel on Shabbat, Saturday, 18 Sivan, 5785—June 14, 2025—is Shlach.

Commentaries from Aleph Beta Academy

Committed identity: C7E406A3271AD1FB1DD2D3C7C3B397436C1620E273D2D20657A707D3A99F72D5988C766229064BD04EF09341112291824824B0852C52B13FD21571D61AE05CAB is a SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.