Dear Friends,
Here I am in the midst of my American adventure!
The flight was amazing (what a cliché of a word! It means next to nothing, but for a change this is what it actually does mean in context). The flight was at least a third empty. When I arrived on Thursday I was totally refreshed from the most relaxing down time ever. I highly recommend not paying enough attention to the calendar, and leaving on Yom Atzmaut…

Wherever I went I met up with some of you. Seeing how you have made lives for yourselves, and integrated what you learned to the real world was a lesson that I shall not forget easily. You are great teachers. Especially when I met the Oldies But Goodies, and heard some of the challenges that you faced and still face without flinching, I found myself willing to learn from you. I met Shulamis Heldorn, who I haven’t seen in decades, and Rochelle Rubin and Aliza Caplan who used to be Elizabeth Wood. They were in Neve forty years ago! We ate a great deal of shish kebab in Flatbush, reminisced and discovered that on the inside nothing changed. When I saw some of my Bnos Avigail girls (who are old enough to be their granddaughters) I saw the same thing. What an education!

People often ask if things change rapidly in Neve. They don’t. The culture around us changes, but the deeper side of the girls who I encounter never changes. There is always sincerity, a bigger than usual scoop of honesty and optimism vying for a front and center position with fear of burning bridges and of facing an unknown future. The backdrop is, of course, different, yesterday the issue that was most frightening was facing a different future than you thought you would face. Today the issue is defining yourself in a world in which the like and don’t like buttons have so much subtle influence on who you are and who you are willing to be.

This coming week’s parshah features what is arguably the most well known mitzvah in the Torah, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. What makes Torah so unique is that there is an entire body of Oral law that tells you what to do with the principles stated in the written law. Loving your neighbor has defined halachot, which makes it more than just a noble sounding aphorism. You have to speak well of your neighbor, treat him with respect, and care enough about him so be genuinely concerned about his future and his losses. The verse ends with the words, “I am Hashem”. Maharal tells you that the implication is that you can discover Hashem through learning to identify Him by loving your neighbor. When you meet someone you are not only going to learn about yourself and about him, you are going to learn about the soul that makes him unique and unlike anyone else who ever lived or ever will live. This opens up new ways to “learn” Hashem by seeing the infinite number of ways in which each person mirrors His image. This only happens if you are both open to making it happen, and then act on it by keeping the laws that tell you how to zero in on his G-dliness.
 
Gotta go. More people to meet. As they say back in Israel, what a keff (ask your local Israeli what that means if you don’t know)
Love,
Tziporah

​Dear Frinds,
​
Sometimes time and place converge and sort of become one thing. I didn’t expect this to happen yesterday, but it did. I went to the tomb of Shmuel HaNavi (the prophet Samuel located about five minutes north of Yerushalaim). He was a miracle child. His mother, Chana, had been married for many years, and only when her husband, Elkanah tried to comfort her for her childlessness by saying that his love and commitment to her should be enough, did she realize that she had depended on him to pray when ultimately no one can pray “for” you, or instead of you. She went to Shilo where the sanctuary was, and prayed silently. No one had ever done this before. When you hear your own voice, you experience what you say.  What was the silence meant to accomplish?

The Arizal says that when you pray silently your thoughts are only your own. You can guard your inner life from the outside and its many voices more easily. Most of us find the outside makes its way in anyway, but at least the basic realization that Hashem hears your thoughts as clearly as you hear your voice seeps in. Eli, the high priest who officiated, didn’t know what to think about the woman who stood there seemingly muttering to herself. When he found out what she was doing he blessed her, and later when her miracle child was born, she named her little boy Shmuel. The Talmud describes him as having a powerful soul, one that gave him spiritual strength that was so great that it paralleled both the soul of Moshe and the soul of Aharon. His closeness to Hashem was like Moshe’s and his love of people was as great as Aharon’s.

When we arrived at his tomb just northwest of Ramot, the Arab custodian of the mosque that was erected over his tomb was coming down the steep stone stairs leading from the main prayer area to the roof. He had locked up for the day, and was on his way out. This is exactly where I wanted to take the girls, and he surprisingly and very kindly agreed to reopen the door. The girls climbed up the stairs. The mosque was constructed over an existing structure built by the crusaders. The stones must have felt the feet of thousands of people over hundreds of years. When we got to the roof, we found ourselves on a large structure with inverted domes. When you look north, you see Ramallah which is presently the capital of the  P.A. In ancient times it was called Rama and was Shmuel’s birth place. A little bit to the right is Shilo which is the site of the sanctuary that Chana went to and from where she found an answer to her prayers. When you turn east, you can see as far as Yam Hamelach, the Dead Sea. Turn south, and you see Ramot to your left and Har Nof (the center of the world…) to your right. On a clear day when you turn a bit further to the left, you can see all the way to Chevron. Finally, when you turn west, you see green fields and Jewish yishuvim on the area that the heaviest battles of the Maccabean struggles took place. You see it all.

Shmuel could look both at the Land of Israel and at the people of Israel and see it all. He didn’t have a permanent home. He travelled throughout Israel, drawing people closer to being who they want to be. He suffered from their lack of understanding of how much of his identity was tied up with them. When they asked for a king, Hashem told him, “they haven’t rejected you, they rejected Me”.

The building is on a hilltop. Every enemy that wanted to gain a foothold in Yerushalaim stood where we stood. This was true in Shmuel's time as well. He, the child of prayer, defended them by teaching them to be worthy enough to remain on the Land, and loved them enough to rebuke them if he had to.
There are still people who care that much.

Someone once went to the Steipler gaon, one of the great luminaries of last generation. He told the Rav that he wouldn’t leave his study until he promised him that he have a child. The Rav refused, but the man didn’t move….After a while, the Steipler relented-he wanted desperately to return to his Torah study. The next year, a new question arose. A little boy came into the world, and his father attributed it to the Steipler’s blessing, and travelled to Bnei Brak to invite him to the bris and to give him the honor of being the child’s sandak, the one who holds the baby as he enters the ancient covenant. This is more than an honor, it is a profound gift with many spiritual implications. The baby's grandfather had a different view; he pointed out that many, many people had been praying for his son and daughter in law for  many years, he amongst them, and that since his is the grandfather, he deserves to be the sandak. He asked the Steipler, “Was it really your promise that did it?” The Rav answered, “I felt immediate guilt about what I did. Who am I to promise a child? I’m not a prophet! Nonetheless, I felt the father’s pain so strongly, that I did know that I had to do something. I went home, and spent hours saying the entire book of Tehillim it was all I could do.” The grandfather said, “I don’t know about whether your pomise is what helped us, but I know that anyone who  feels a stranger’s pain so strongly that they say the entire book of Tehillim (which takes hours to say) is someone I want bonded to my grandson.

These are my heroes.

Learning to love and to respect each other is especially important during the sfirah period between Pesach and Shavuous. This is the time that you have to be part of something bigger than you are in order to make the Torah your own.
​
Love,
Tziporah

I just came up from the fire that burnt the neighborhood's chametz. For those of you who remember Rechov HaKablan, it was in the empty space between the French synagogue and the stairs that lead down to the Breslov minyan. The kids of course are fascinated by the scene. The latent pyromania that occupies a little space in the 5-10 crowd is fully alerted. The boys especially love thowing yesterday's falafel into the flames. The adults who are their both to burn their own chametz and to watch the fire and put it out when the 11:10 deadline comes are more involved in what is happening spiritually and symbolically.
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Let it burn
All the evil in me and in the rest of us
Let it burn
The ego the fears the pettiness that fuels the hatred
Let it burn
The envy and hatred that fuel the endless violence and doesn’t let it die a silent death
Let it burn
By the fire of your inner knowledge of good
By your longing for connection and love
By the Torah whose fire can never be totally extinguished by evil
By the force of the One who redeemed us out of Egypt
And is with you and us, Now and Then,  Always and Tomorrow
Let it burn

The siren just blew announcing that the last time for eating chametz has passed for this year. The next week will be a time for simplicity/originality/and sharing when it comes to eating. Every bite of matzah gives you the same message. Eating is so visceral that you can't forget its Pesach even for a moment. The moment that Hashem melted away all of the limitations, fears, sins, and every other barrier that kept is in Egypt is repeated tonight. You know what your own prison is. For some of you it is lowliness, for others it's disappointment in yourself an in others. For still others it's about money, or about health. No matter what the prison looks like, (and without saying too much, one of you is in a literal prison), Hashem has the key. If you let the faith that is what made you the person you are stay with you as you eat the Bread of Faith as the Arizal would call matzah.
The entire week is meant to move you further than the seder night. The word seder literally means "order", and in this case it means the order that Hashem had in mind when He created the world. It incudes both good and evil, light and dark, nights like the seder nights, and ordinary nights. Maharal tells us that this seder is purposeful. It's what gives you the ability to drive away darkness with the light inside you. Some people are masters of this art. I was at the French Hospice yesterday, visiting my friend Marcie. She is totally disabled, but is full of light. Another friend came with me, as well as my daughter Guli. Using her word board Marcie let us know that she remembers my friend, Judy Silverstein from Toronto (Neve cica 1812) from her last years visit. They discovered that they shared middle names (Temma, not such a common one) and that their grandparents shared . We were soon joined by Dr. Abrams (also from Neve's ancient days). Before you know it, Marcie directed us to sing one song she knew we would all know, Yerushalaim Shel Zahav.  Judy's voice is sweet, I am good with the words, and had enough sense to sing quietly. The others turned it into a chioir.

​What a moment of light!
Love, Tziporah