Dear Friends,

The winter is the best time for learning. There’s something about the long nights and the cold and wind that makes a cup of tea and a sefer very appealing. This week’s Parshah is so full of ideas that it’s hard to stay centered on one of them. Especially when there are lots of books, and many flavors of tea just waiting…
One of the most profound ideas about G-d’s relationship to you as an individual is that He challenges you to the point that you feel that you can’t bear much more, but at the same time He shows you every morning that He believes in you, and is giving you another day of life to prove it.

This isn’t just you. Get up from the computer right now, and if you are near your sfarim (Jewish books), take a quick look at the maps that many of the Chumashim have. If you look at the Stone Chumash, or Living Torah you will find one easily. If you don’t own either one, maybe think about how easy it would be to follow up what the Torah has to say about the week you are in if you had one…The map will tell you that the route the Jews took out of Egypt made no sense. They had a destination, but they headed out in the wrong direction. This was no accident; Hashem was leading them.

What are you supposed to think when it seems to you that Hashem is leading you astray? For so many of you, when you content yourself with a cursory glance at your life, that’s what you see. You want to be married, but you aren’t. You want to be financially secure, but it isn’t happening. Your kids aren’t poster kids for Be Frum Today.  What does He want from you? The well-meaning people who are in your life may have told you that Hashem never gives anyone a test that they can’t handle. Do you find yourself going into denial? Do you find yourself thinking “I can’t handle this another (day, minute, year?  Choose one). Let’s go back and join your ancestors as they wandered the desert. The nearest way to Israel would have been to head west, up the coast. They would have reached what today is the Gaza Strip, gone further up to Ashdod Caesarea, Haifa, Akko and Naharia. Today the entire journey would probably take no more than one day by car. They ended up in the desert for 40 years. The generation that left Egypt as adults never saw the Israeli coast, or even stepped foot into the Promised Land. What did Hashem have in mind for them?
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He wanted them to grow into the role that they would take in history, both the history of the world, and each person’s individual story. He wanted them to stretch beyond their comfort level. He didn’t want to break them. He knew they couldn’t’ face what awaited them on the coast. The Philistines would have attacked them, and they weren’t strong enough to face them in battle. Before they could enter Eretz Yisrael, they needed to see the sea split, to see water gush forth from a rock in the middle of the desert, to live with a pillar of cloud leading them during the day, and a pillar of flame lead them through the darkness of the desert’s night. They also needed the desperation that they felt before the sea parted and the thirst that they felt before the water came gushing forth. The years of slavery had to be shaken off completely before they could reinvent themselves as a people who have no fear of anyone but G-d.

What are you afraid of? Rejection? Lonlieness? Poverty? Having your body turn against you and die? There are real fears out there. If you serve G-d (as the Jews did on that first Pesach in Egypt) does that guarantee the easy outcomes? Not on the surface- they found themselves standing in front of the sea with the Egyptians hot in pursuit (I always wanted to use that cliché, but never had the chance), the sea in front of them, and the desert on either side. The sea split. Everything for one moment in history was absolutely clear. They understood the way the puzzle comes together. They knew that Hashem’s attribute of justice and His attribute of mercy are one in the source. They were being saved, changed, beloved. The Egyptians were being met out the justice that they so richly deserved. This was a step towards their becoming a people who live their beliefs in Him in everything they do. This is when they developed real faith. What does living with real faith look like? It has so many faces.

My son in law’s uncle, Rav Shabtai Frankel is one of the people who know what faith is, and and lives it. He has a publishing house dedicated to printing the basic books of Jewish scholarship in the most accurate and well-presented way possible. His magna opus is his edition of the Rambam’s (Maimonides) famous s Yad Chazakah, and encyclopedia of every topic relevant to living a Jewish life, including the mitzvos that are no longer practiced today (such as everything involved in the sacrificial offerings). In order to do this the way he wanted, he acquired every possible manuscript of the work he wanted to publish. This lead him to the Cairo Geniza, a treasure of ancient books and manuscripts that was discovered hidden away in a room set aside for sacred writings that are no longer in use. There were hundreds of ordinary siddurs, and chumashim. There were also rare books and manuscripts. There is almost nothing extant in Rambam’s original handwriting. For almost two million shekels Frankel bought a partial manuscript of the Yad. When he returned to Israel, he began to examine the fragile antique writings at his desk, in order to note the differences between the original and the contemporary versions that you have in the book cases of so many of the frum people you know. One of his assistants came in to take a look at the treasure. He was holding a cup of coffee. I think you can guess what happened next.
The manuscript was irredeemable. It’s paper was too fragile to be blotted to remove the coffee. Rav Frankel left the room immediately. The assistant stayed glued to his place, not knowing what to say or do. The Rav came back holding a cup of coffee. “You dropped your coffee. I made you another cup”. The man didn’t know what to say. Frankel looked at him and said, “The Rambam is gone anyway. It’s Hashem’s decree. Have the coffee”.

Next time you find yourself floundering, just say, “It is what He wants it to be. Have a coffee”.
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,
Winter in Yerushalaim is so different than in anywhere else in the world. When you say shma, you recount Hashem’s care and love for us. The way it is demonstrated isn’t by Divine passivity; it is defined by His presence in our moment to moment lives in real time. All life depends on water and when it rains you are actually seeing life force descend. Until now the winter here was dry, cold, and gray. Each drop of rain feels like a kiss. That doesn’t mean that it is comfortable. Or easy to walk when it storms. Or easy to like its high drama at the moment it hits you.

Is rain a miracle? If you look at Ramban at the end of this week’s Parshah (which I’m sure you were all planning to do), you would find a way of looking at it, and at many other facets of reality through  different lenses. He tells you not to expect the kind of miracles out did your wildest Technicolor imagination fueled fantasy of what could happen. Hashem wants us to discover Him without the razamatazz. Find Him in your heart and in your mind. When you realize this you are free to relive what the Jews experienced in Egypt without assuming that you ARE the Jews in Egypt. You are you. You can let yourself think about who you would be if you were actually there. When you do that, what you may find is the real you, the one that believes in miracles. Think for a moment about the plague of darkness. The atmosphere thickened to prevent light from penetrating and thickened more to prevent movement.  This is far beyond what anyone could call “darkness”. The light that the Jews experienced was unlike any ordinary physical light that you see when you open your eyes in the morning. It was the blazing radiance of the light that was created on the first day, light that is experienced on a daily basis when you learn, feel inspired and daven. It is never strong enough to take on actual physical properties-for us that light is spiritual and invisible. For the Jews in Egypt the force of the spiritual light penetrated physicality so that they actually saw the darkness tht surrounded the Egyptians. They knew that they were lost in the physical manifestation of the darkness that defined them in every way.

Ramban tells you that Hashem isn’t going to repeat miracles such as these for everyone who entertains doubts. You can’t “order” a miracle. You can use your insight into what this Parshah tells you to change your life by letting the many mitzvos that are there to commemorate what happened in Egypt touch you. You don’t have to pass a mezuzah, kiss it, and move on. You can look at it for a split second and think about the moment that doorposts were part of the story of the exodus. You can (at least some of the time) let your heart and your mind work together.

There were and are people who do this successfully. They had with what I would call “miracle consciousness”. What that means is that they saw everything in life as an expression of Hashem’s will. For my friend, Henny Machlis enjoying the happy endings (from “and everyone had enough to eat” to “and in the end they both got married”) were just as miraculous as anything that took place thousands of years ago in Egypt.
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There are times when letting the exodus touch you is easier than other times. These weeks in which the Torah portion narrates the exodus of course is one of them. For me, when I go to the Kotel and see the masses of people from different cultures and backgrounds looking at the Wall with such awe, I can see them with packs on their backs leaving Goshen and the rest of Greater Egypt to parts unknown. There are also places that are particularly evocative. When I go to Tzfat, and walk the streets that the people who saw Hashem with the moment by moment, something in me make more demands. It tells me to wake up already.

Most of you are living in places where YOU are the light! Your lifestyle says it all. You aren’t just into earning it and spending it. You want more. More light, more meaning. You made choices that show that you did more than want. You actually BRING the light of Torah with you just by being yourselves.

For those of you who are here, I am adding an enclosure about a Shabbos in Tzfat. It may bring you some of the light of shovavim (these weeks of redemption).
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Love,
Tziporah  

Dear friends,
I heard an amazing story from the famous maggid (speaker) Rav. Meilech Biderman.
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In the wilds of Manhattan there is a man who is not only materially successful but also unusually generous. He is in manufacturing, and receives the representatives of various tzedakah organizations in his plant since he spends so much time at work. This includes the many meshulachim from Eretz Yisrael. His reputation as a giver, and the flood of people who came for donations didn’t leaved him feeling drained or resentful. Quite the opposite. He felt privileged to share what he had. The Israelis sometimes spent significant time wandering through the endless corridors and wings, so he put up signs in Hebrew directing the meshulachim to his office so they wouldn’t be in the unenviable position of asking people directions but not quite understanding what they said. The signs all said, “CEO” in English and in Hebrew (baal habayit) with an arrow showing the way. Once a meshulach came to his office and said, “Only Hashem is the baal-habayit the CEO! You are in his hands just like I am, just like we all are”. The CEO liked what the meshulach said - it hit home. He is a man of real integrity, and was well aware of where his ego could lead him. He had the sign changed to “Manager”.

A few days later a pipe burst. The products stored in his warehouse were getting ruined. The manager saw it on his surveillance camera. He also saw the woman who was responsible for organizing the warehouse on her smartphone oblivious to the damage the burst pipe was doing. He tried the PA system but she was too far gone into the nether world of Twitter or whatever grabbed her at the moment.  The losses were significant for him. He decided to fire her for her over the top negligence.

Her husband was furious. He had categorized the boss as a Bad Guy from day one. He was outraged and headed towards the plant with a loaded gun. It didn’t take him long to get lost in the maze of corridors. He asked employee directions to the CEO’s office. When he read the sign on the door, it said Manager. “This is a mistake” he thought. He knocked on the door and asked “Where’s the boss? I need to see the CEO”. The CEO pointed upward, meaning to hint that only Hashem is the Boss. “Hashem is the boss. I'm just one of His workers”. The man misunderstood him, and headed upstairs to the next floor. The CEO saw his face and took in how abnormal the entire conversation was. Why the rage? He then realized that something was very wrong and called the police. They came arrested the enraged husband, and he talked enough to get himself convicted of attempted murder.

Do you think that you are the boss? Maybe see things from another angle. You are an employee just like the rest of us.

Think of the last time you sat on the beach and watched the waves. How did you feel? Consciously or not, you were experiencing surrender. Your soul recognizes that the rhythm of the waves are part of a symphony called Creation, and that you are part of it. When you find that your lack of control makes you feel tempest- tossed, learn to scream out your pain to the only One who can help you. Your scream doesn’t have to be audible. It can be in your heart and soul. This is sometimes easier to do than to pray with words.

When the Jews were in Egypt, the Arizal tells us that their ability to speak was in exile. The text in the Chumash says that they cried out to Hashem. The Meohr Vashemesh explains that their outcry was silent. The most important thing to realize in this regard is that Hashem hears you whether you feel that you deserve His attention or that you don’t. The Jews in Egypt were far from perfect but their prayers were the direct cause of their redemption. It was after they cried out that Moshe had the vision of the burning bush and everything began to change.

The Midrash (Shmos Rabba 11:1- if I didn’t know the source I wouldn’t believe what I am telling you) says something amazing.  It says, “Hashem said to Moshe to rise early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh. (Shmos 8; 16). Why did Moshe have to be there so early, “The Holy One blessed is He said to Moshe “Go to Pharaoh before he goes out to pray” Even his prayers are heard. It was time for the plagues to do their job. It was not G-d’s will to have Pharaoh to pray to change the decree.

We are in the parshiot that talk about the ten plagues. They demonstrated Hashem’s awareness of each individual life, His enormous love for us was great enough for Him to turn nature inside out for us. Reading about them can awaken you to noticing His continuous presence.

This is the perfect time to take down the invisible sign that says CEO and replace it with one that says ‘I just work here- I’m only the Manager.’

Love
Tziporah