Dear friends,

When I was a child (okay, also much later), I trusted the Euro-centric version of world history that you find in the textbooks. Things sort of began with villages, and then city-states, an assortment of empires and before you know it feudalism raised its head in what later became known as the Dark Ages. Don’t worry about the gloom. The Renaissance will soon come, bringing the Enlightenment along with it. Before you can sing Dixie (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the ditty, or who dislike the idea of non-Jewish music taking up valuable space in your mind, you can substitute Yonatan HaKatan. It takes about the same time), the Age of Exploration came by when Not Nice “People “discovered” and claimed populated areas of the world as their own. Take a deep breath, allow for the fall of monarchies, the birth of democracy and various other New Deals, and here we are! 

It was only later that I noticed that the majority of the world was barely mentioned, and that I learned a lot about the history of conquest and warfare. Yes, there are cultural overtones, but that’s just a response to the rest of the Eisovic (is there a better way to say, from Eisov? If there is don’t hesitate to tell me) version of the Story of the World.

The Torah tells you to ask your fathers and your elders how Hashem has ruled His world throughout time. Its theme is the consequences of moral choices both for individuals and for the world (as Ramban points out in his introduction to Breishis). The most significant episode in world history took place at Mount Sinai. The Parshah that tells you about it is named after Yisro.
The Shlah (and others) tell us that Yisro was a reincarnation of Kayin. Kayin’s mother, Chava, (Eve), gave him this name meaning, “I have acquired a man with Hashem”, thus linking his name with the word acquisition. To him, life was something to acquire, a gift, one to open and enjoy and most of all to own. He recognized that G-d was the Creator, but viewed His presence as that of an artist who made a work of art and then left the museum to the spectators. Yisro’s nature was was similar to Kayins. He too wanted to have it all. The difference is that his field of action was spiritual. He explored every spiritual path, worshipped every god. It was clear to him that G-d is a living presence, (and had not abandoned his masterpiece, the world) but the concept of His unity evaded him. This is actually not very surprising, when you consider how fragmented the world seems to be. Good. Evil. Joy. Tragedy. Almost all religions are baffled by this enigma and end up worshippin a multiplicity of forces – the god of light and of dark, the redeemer and the satan etc. Then something happened that changed Yisro.

He had heard of the miracles that had taken place in Egypt. He had already taken grave risks to tell Pharoah (who heard of him - his reputation for wisdom was widely known) that there was no Jewish Problem - and no need to find a final solution for dealing with this “problem”. The result was that had to escape Egypt to avoid death. He had (possibly through some level of the “spiritual grapevine” that would lead back to Avraham’s day) heard of the Jews, but to him they were another people, who had their own path and their own god. When all the waters of the world split, when the Yam Suf split, he reached a new conclusion. The G-d that split the sea for His people is not some major player among all of the gods in the cosmos. He is universal, aware of the world and all of its people. When the sun stood still during the battle of Amalek, this conclusion was strengthened.

Many of you know all of this, and may be wondering why I am writing about it.

It has to change the way you think about history, not just, as it occurred, but as it evolves day by day.
From the very beginning He gave us humans tools through which we could use our minds and hearts. There were people who made good choices. Avraham chose chessed and began a progression that ended with Yaakov recognizing that Hashem can be found both by doing battle with darkness and winning with devotion, mesiras nefesh and tefillah (Yitzchak’s path) as well as through chessed and emunah (Avraham’s path). He saw the whole picture. That’s what truth is about.

Life is about searching for truth. YIsro was willing to look hard. He discovered that Hashem is there to save the Jews, destroy evil, and do so at all times and in all places.

The Parshah with the Ten Commandments is named for an idol- worshipper who found truth. This is where you have to put yourself to really receive Torah.

What pleasure to find that the pieces all fit together! How wonderful it is not to be overwhelmed by good or afraid to walk the narrow bridge.
 
It was great to get back to outside world. It always is. You are part of history every time you make a choice.
​
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,
​
One of you called me last week. She asked how I was feeling. When I answered her with my usual Baruch Hashem, which tells you nothing about how I am, she sounded somewhat confused. “You feel okay with COVID?” 

“I don’t have COVID”, I told her. That was Weds night. Thursday found me very tired. Friday I barely got through pulling Shabbos together. I was coughing and sneezing non-stop. My husband was similarly not okay. Dizzy. Exhausted. We took tests on motzei Shabbos and discovered that we are both members of the club. Today (Thursday) finds us both better, but not really. Good friends and family have been sending us their love via food, vitamins, and help navigating the medical jungle. The latest brand of Corona, Omicron variant, is far milder, and in the vast majority of cases, more like an ordinary flu than like its previous mutations. This is certainly the case for us, for which we are most grateful.

That doesn’t mean that I have any idea of what to make of this, or the continuum of a pandemic that started two years ago, and at this point has not shown any sign of being off the page. Which brings me back to the Parshah.

The plagues had done their job. The Jews were out of Egypt. It looked like the end of the story, but it wasn’t. The Egyptians were after them. This didn’t just happen here; the heavenly counterpart of the Egyptians and the Jews were doing battle simultaneously. The spiritual forces that are unleashed by human choices are real. Every culture and country leaves a mark. The Egyptians were the movers and shakers of their time. They were devout believers in everything but G-d. They created an amoral culture where the only real ideology was being pro-degradation. As the Jews stood before the sea, the moment of judgement had come. The “force” of Egypt said to G-d, “these are idol worshippers (meaning the Egyptians) and those are idol worshippers (meaning the Jews). Why should those be saved, and these drown?” He wasn’t lying. Even those Jews who had done the korban Pesach, and had followed Moshe out to the desert were not perfect by anyone’s definitions. They worshipped idols. They were on the 49thlevel of spiritual blockage and defilement. Hashem’s answer was, "These are the children of Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov”

So What?

Those words tell you something about them and about yourself. They had not as yet left Egypt behind, and for them to go on to the next step of genuine redemption, they needed a miracle. They had potentials that a miracle could uncover. They needed the sea to split. 
Don’t you?
The times we live in are so difficult to interpret. No one could have prepared themselves for the level of physical and moral degradation that surrounds us and lives inside us. Are we redeemable? Yes, not only because of the great light that you can see in the midst of the darkness when you look for it in the faces of people you see every day, some of whom are the hidden tzadikim- the peple who care, reach out and demand no recognition. The people who quietly give, the rabbanim who answer the phone to strangers at unlikely hours, the people who give cookies from Ezer Mitzion to the patients in hospitals whose names are not known.  They bring light, but there are also those who don’t. 

No matter what you see, there is always the unseen presence of the Avos. The rays of light are more brilliant because of the great darkness, but we need miracles as much as the people who faced the Yam Suf did and we need to ask for them.

Sfas Emmes writes that when Hashem began the process of creating the world, everything he added to the world generated its own brand of concealment. Time, space, laws of nature hide Him just as much as they reveal Him. It was only with the exodus that His presence was revealed. The word “revealed” is important. He didn’t say renewed, generated, or any other word that would suggest that something new actually occurred. Everything has a connection to Hashem, that can be hidden or not even felt, but it’s still there. This is what the Nature Song (Pirkei Shirah) is about. He tells you that when we sang the song of the sea, we saw it split, everything in nature also sang. The song had to exist inside, and the right moment had to happen for it to come out. 

You have to ask Hashem to bring you to the right moment. 

You have to ask to know what to do. How to get the sea to split; how to surrender to Hashem, and to do whatever he wants of you at the same time is easy in this respect. There’s nothing really to do; even the decisions about vaccination become irrelevant once you get a positive reading. Of course, there are the basics, “don’t spread the joy. Keep the isolation regulations” etc. However, the fact remains that the story isn’t over. Ramban tells you about earlier times, when you could go to your local orthodox Navi and find out what you have to fix.

Today things are better. You go to Hashem Himself.

The sages equate the struggle for earning a living and for finding your mate to the struggle for the sea to split. You know people who are in front of the sea and don’t know where to turn. The physical darkness and the unending spiritual and moral battles are real. 

Next week will be Tu BiShvat. The sap will begin to rise, and the trees will resume their cycle of growth. It’s a time of hope, and perhaps BEH a time for miracles.

Now the good stuff. I have been negligent about writing mazal tovs. Here goes; either you know her or you don’t. Mazal Tov to Tziporah Deutch on her engagement. I hope that more mazal tovs will follow for all of the miracles!

Love,
Tziporah
 

Dear friends,

I love a good story about a good person, an act of unexpected sweetness that shows you Hashem’s love and providence. The Bad stories are even easier to tell, and are generally much easier to “sell”, and harder to ignore.

It’s human nature to respond to horror with talk. It alleviates confusion, and gives you the opportunity to vent your feelings. It also simultaneously opens two doors. One is the door you have to open to re-establish justice and heal real pain. The other is the door that you can open to flood you with the delight of righteous indignation (one of the cheapest and most rewarding feelings on earth), and smug I-told-you-ism. In the case at hand, choosing the wrong one is a moral disaster. If you don’t get it right, you deny the victims closure, and leave them in a vacuum where they will never forgive your ignoring the toxic evil that they have experienced.

I am sure that only those of you who live in a cave have no idea of where I am headed. For your benefit, I am talking about the tragedy of Chaim Walder’s victims, and the tragedy of his life

In the course of my years in Neve, every so often I came across girls who had wounds so deep that healing was almost unimaginable. The dread that they felt when someone they knew and trusted would leave them feeling defiled, often times guilty, and often times full of dread. “If you tell anyone what happens” was, for them, the beginning of sentences that never end well.

When the story broke, I chose to say little. I wasn’t there and neither was the supercilious writer for Haaretz, one of Israel’s left-leaning dailies. I had heard his name before. His career is built on exposés and he spares no effort time or (probably other people’s) money on digging up anything he could about the observant community that he abandoned. Often times people who leave the path of Torah remain scrupulous about some mitzvos. I don’t know him personally, but I know that one mitzvah that he treats lightly is telling the truth. As time went on, it turned out that some of Israel’s most respected authorities, world class dayanim associated with the most respected courts were conducting interview after interview . Their conclusions were hair-raising and undisputed. One thing must not be forgotten. I am not sure what the sentence would have been if he were tried in a court of law, and sentenced, but I am sure that we don’t have a punishment called Death By Shaming.

One of the Torah’s mitzvos is “Don’t stand on your brother’s blood”. This applies to him, he was a fellow Jew, a member of the Tribe. It applies even more so to each of his victims, all of whom are left bleeding. Making the reality that they lived through known may save lives. Being heard validated, and seeing that they are not the guilty party is a step towards healing. The facts are out. There is at this point a need to change your focus.

What seems to me to be far more important is knowing how to prevent recurrences of horrors of this nature.

1-Children have to be taught that the thief is the Bad Guy, not his victim, even if the victim wasn’t clever enough to foil the thief. Creating an atmosphere in which the basic rules of safety subtly give kids the message that the Bad Guy is the kid who trusted a stranger is wrong. They have to know as early as possible that no one ever did bad things because the Torah told them to. They do bad things when they disobey the commandments. The child is never to blame for his being abused. Parents and teachers have to be available to listen.

MUCH MORE IMPORTANT AS A PREVENTATIVE MEASURE!!!

2-The Torah is pro-active. It is far, far better to protect yourself than it is to punish a criminal after the fact. Children and adults must know that KEEPING the laws of yichud (being in solitude with a man) and negia (affectionate touching) will protect them.

3-Suicide robbed both the offender and his victims of peace.

I did not forget the first paragraph. It’s easy once you have at least some idea of what happened, and what the concrete responses must be, to fall into other traps.
Lashon hara is a killer. It doesn’t just kill the one about whom the lashon hara is spoken, it kills the speaker and the listener by robbing them of the positivity that has to be your backdrop if you want a life that includes Hashem. A person who habitually speaks lashon hara can’t see the Face of the Shechina. He won’t even seek It out-he will focus on the clouds that conceal It.
You can’t ever allow yourself to be a judge unless you are a genuine dayan who has to adjudicate a case. Even in this circumstance, you can only define deeds as good or bad, permitted or forbidden, pure or defiled. Only Hashem can judge people. Charisma success, and being in the public light, beloved from afar are all challenges to maintaining personal balance and integrity. Chaim Walder’s 53 books were inspiring, sensitively written, and sold 2 million copies, a record for Israel. He lost his balance. I didn’t stand in his shoes. Hashem is called The Place in which the world exists. Pirkei Avos tells you not to judge anyone until you stand in their Place, where something pure remains. For him. For the journalist, for all of us, this is always true. It must never distort your commitment for sharing the pain of victims.
Tomer Devora (Chapter 2) writes about olam haba, and the effect of mitzvos. Olam Haba is far greater and more powerful than anything in this world is. It isn’t’ discussed directly because you can only use words that have meaning to you, and olam haba is in an entirely different category. Any mitzvah that you do gives you access to olam haba, even the most minor of mitzvos gives you something eternal that will never be extinguished. Each person must pay for their sins, and will receive reward for their mitzvos. If someone did 40 sins and observed 50 mitzvos, the result isn’t reward for 10 mitzvos. It’s still punishment for 40 sins, and reward for 50 mitzvos. This is, of course not numerical. Only Hashem knows the worth of a particular mitzvah done by a specific person, and the gravity of a sin done by another person.

People are complex.

You are a mixed bag, and so am I. This doesn’t mean that we are all equal or identical or that all people are equally as good. It does however mean that avoiding simple black and white conclusions keeps you honest. It’s important to stay in the present, and to use every opportunity to grow, to care about others and about yourself, to reach out and to feel Hashem’s presence as you face what today’s potentials are.
Hashem took us out of Egypt by doing great miracles that opened the doors that we closed step by step by descending to the 49th level of defilement. May we soon see miracles that will open the door to redemption.
​
Love,
Tziporah