Thoughts with Jewish Insight
|
Want to receive the letter before it gets posted here?
Sign up to have the letter sent straight to your inbox!
Sign up to have the letter sent straight to your inbox!
Thoughts with Jewish Insight
|
8/4/2019 Shir HaShirim: Song of SongsDear friends,
Just a few words, to give me and you an opportunity to take a break during the Pesach preps. You might recall from Purim, that the word Megillah isn’t the name of the Book of Esther. It means “migalleh” which means “reveals”. Each one of the 5 megillos reveals something that you wouldn’t know unless you have a heart that is so sensitive that things that are below the surface are part of your inner world. The Book of Ruth tells you about change and discovery. Eichah tells you about finding deep truths in the midst of mourning. Esther tells you how to find Hashem when He is hidden. Kohelet tells you how to find true wisdom. Shir HaShirim (the Song of Songs), tells you how to find love in its deepest and most powerful version. It runs 8 paragraphs according to the now generally used version. The paragraphs were the “gift” of the non-Jewish scholars who had a monopoly on the printing presses in earlier times. The classical arrangement has the text arranged in five paragraphs. Each one describes another era in which Hashem’s un-ending and yet evolving love for us is revealed. The style is a parable. There was a king (aren’t you surprised?) who wanted to take a wife of the people, one who was pure of heart, and not as “sophisticated” as the royals. He finds her and brings her to the palace. In the course of time, she finds living in the palace to be excruciatingly difficult. You always had to be “on”, look good, have good manners, be worthy of being the Kings wife. Ultimately, she escaped the palace and returned to her village. After having been in the palace, she suddenly saw that the villagers were vulgar, boorish, and coarse. Nothing about them changed from when she knew them earlier on. She changed. She did nothing to suggest her true feelings towards them, but they knew the truth. They were relentless; they spat at her, ripped her clothes off her, degraded her as much as a human can degrade another human. She felt trapped. She couldn’t return to the palace she had burned her bridges by running away. She couldn’t bear living in the village. The King searched for her and eventually found her. He knocked at her door, and she couldn’t bear the shame of facing him, so she kept it closed. He knocked again, and said, “Open the door! Don’t you know that the ketubah (marriage contract) I wrote for you is different than any other ketubah? He showed her what it said. “No matter how many times you betray me, I will never betray you”. The second chapter begins with the words, “I am the chavatzelet of the Sharon, the rose of the valley”. Many English translation would have Chavatzelet mean “Lily”. The Gra, however says that both words describe different species of roses. The Chavatzelet is the rose that grows in the Sharon, Israel’s arid central plain. It’s sturdy, tall and has yellow petals. The rose of the valley grows where the land is moist, and it is far more beautiful, but it is delicate unlike the sturdy chavatzelet. The Gra tells us that each of us can describe themselves as having the beauty of the princess, symbolized here by the roses in the verse. The tzadikim grow among the thorns, but become people of awesome spiritual beauty. There are two kinds of tzadikim. Some are those who become who they are by facing the heat. They have to deal with opposition, rejection, financial struggles and with each challenge they become more beautiful. The classical kind of this brand of tzadik was Avraham who stood against the entire world. There are other tzadikim who are brought up from their earliest childhood to seek good. They are the ones that seem to come from another planet, one in which people live up to their ideals. Many of you have heard of Rabbitzen Kanievsky. If you haven’t, look her up. But then, read about her mother, and her grandmother. Things that you never would have dreamed possible in LA, Jo’berg or Brooklyn. Both kind of tzadikim are roses. Both are beloved. Both have the sacred promise of Hashem to never abandon us. Pesach is the time of love, of kept promises and deep deep humility in the face of the kind of love we have experienced. In every generation they try to destroy us, and Hashem rescues us even when the tzadik part of us is well hidden. We all have a little bit of each kind of tzadik in us at various times in our lives. Next letter, I’ll write a few anecdotes. Hopefully by then, the kitchen will be gluten free…. Love, Tziporah 2/4/2019 The heroines of PesachDear friends.
As always, I like giving the good news first. Our dear Chaya Shaina Gold is engaged. For those of you who weren’t lucky enough to go to Bnos Avigail, take my word for it, her chassan is one lucky guy. So is Jenny Horn’s (of Neve) chosson. I actually met him, so I can attest to the fact that she also did well. Etty Svei’s wedding invitation just came, and Brooke Mizrachi’s wedding is still recent enough to feel the simchah in the air. For those of you who don’t know any of the above people, or who are thinking (consciously or otherwise), “I don’t have what they have. I can’t feel anything more than numbness at best, and a hard to describe mixture of self-hatred, angst, and envy at worst, why do you have a need to go on and on about this? You know very well that most of the people who read your letter don’t necessarily know the mazal tov celebs, and even those who do are sometimes depressed rather than elated by the news.) You have a point. Years ago, when we were living in Segev, I invited some close friends to spend Pesach with us. The indescribable beauty and awesome silence of the scarcely populated Western Galil was something I wanted to share. They had just given birth to twins (and yes, when you know what twins are like in terms of their constant need to eat etc., the word “they” is in place. No one can do this alone). Getting away from the pre-Pesach cleanup and the holiday cooking was very appealing to them. Then something happened to change the plan. A neighbor who had a tragic history of late miscarriage lost another child. I was with her, and saw the lifeless 6 month fetus after he was born. He was real. Eyes, ears, nose, little fingers. It suddenly was clear, that I can’t create a situation whereby the mother who had just lost another child would see the tiny twins every day. The Moshav was too small to be anonymous. There was no place to hide. My husband z”l asked a well-regarded rabbi what to do in this situation. It wasn’t life or death, but he knew that he had to find someone with a sensitive heart to hear the question. The rabbi told us to rescind the invitation. The twin’s parents would have a hectic holiday, but it would be forgotten very quickly. The woman was fragile by her nature. She had so much to bear and didn’t need to bear still more. The burden wasn’t going anywhere. So now, back to your question. Why am I sharing good news that can feel toxic to those of you who are fragile and in pain? The reason is that some news belongs to everyone. We are where we are, but it’s possible to at least aspire to being like the Klausenberger Rebbe who after losing 11 children in the holocaust, spent the remainder of his life dedicating himself to the many refugee children, destitute children from families who came to Israel with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing, and saving lives via the famous Laniado Hospital that he founded in Netanya. He would say with his characteristic profound simplicity, “What difference does it make if it’s my child or someone else’s child. They all belong to Hashem; they are His children. What made this profound is that he meant every word. The heroines of Pesach are both the anonymous women who did everything humanly possible to bring more children into the world, and Yocheved and Miriam who are explicitly mentioned. Who were these women? Imagine spending your days in despair. Being a slave (even a well-treated one) means living for someone else’s gain and agenda. Your destiny isn’t in your hands, and you have no reason to think that what you do today will have any effect on what your life will be tomorrow. It wasn’t that way in Egypt. It was much much worse. Not only were they slaves, employed to make someone else rich, they were enslaved with the explicit purpose of a slow and steady brand of genocide. Would you want to bring a child into that kind of reality? Be honest. There, days and nights were not their own. They were subsisting on matzah before anyone ever heard of Pesach. What were they thinking? They knew that human life is the most precious commodity that there is, and they also knew that whether or not they would live to raise their children, they were children of Hashem, and members of His people. They were forced by their circumstances to abandon their kids in the fields, but they didn’t give up. Their sensitivity to Hashem being a G-d of life, who had made promises to their ancestors kept them going time after time. Yocheved was called Shifra (which comes from the word for beautifying. Any of you named Shapiro? Shaffer? Nu so much for Jewish names for today). She wanted them to have beautiful baby clothes and did what she could to make it happen. Miriam was called Puah she would hum melodies to the doomed children to calm them. It would be reasonable to think, “What a waste of time and energy. Half of the babies are going to be thrown into the Nile, and the other half may end up wishing that they were also “lucky” enough to die quickly rather than suffer the endless tedious agony of Egyptian slavery”. You would be wrong. Each of those children was a link in a chain. Their lives had meaning in a realm of being that we don’t know anything about, a realm far beyond what we can genuinely know or see. Their mothers are credited with the redemption, since being redeemed (as Maharal says) means being yourself. Nothing is more genuinely Jewish than treasuring life. That doesn’t only mean treasuring the life of doomed Jewish babies in Egypt. It means your life. Your life has endless purpose whether or not it worked out According to Plan (meaning your plan. It definitely worked out according to Hashem’s plan). You may feel that if you aren’t in the mazal tov paragraph or if you aren’t in whatever paragraph your yetzer hara composed for you , that you are somehow less, a permanent member of the Unfulfilled. You may feel that I am being patronizing, and lack understanding. You may be right on that count, but you aren’t right on the other one. Serve Hashem with joy See Him before you The beginning of wisdom is awe of G-d Hashem’s Torah is complete, it restores the soul Let us know how to count our days These words are all verses from Tehillim. A friend of mine came by on Shabbos, and we discussed them. These are the verses that Sara Schneirer asked to be engraved on her tombstone. We should only be wise enough to engrave them on our hearts. Maybe then, we will really be in Yerushalaim next year! Love, Tziporah |
|