Dear Friends,

I don't know how many of you actually follow the Parshah, but if you do, this past one is for sure one of the most fascinating ones in the Torah. It's so rich with ideas that are unique to the way of thinking that the Torah fosters. You have the idea of the finalization of the census and the laws concerning the unique position of the Levities (how non politically correct- a member of tribe being put in a superior position from) the age of thirty days, to the laws of maintaining spiritual purity within our collective lives. The story of the sota (soon to be discussed), the nazir (ditto) and finally the repetition of the way the princes of the twelve tribes each brought the same offering.

The idea of living up to who you are is the pivot of the Parshah in many ways. G-d gives you the components of your core personality, your background, and your family. It is up to you to do something with it. The Levities were in many ways the ones who gave each of the very diverse tribes a collective identity. Their name, Levi, literally means "the one who accompanies" and was lived out by them in act after act that showed their intense loyalty to Hashem, and their commitment to never abandoning Him. This is intrinsic; for that reason as soon as a Levite is clearly a viable human, he is already a Levi. This isnt' the result of any sort of whim from the higher ups, it is G-d Himself telling them that this is their core. You are Jewish; You didn't necessarily make a choice to be one of the Tribe. IT's as much part of you as your mind or your heart. Nurturing this aspect of your identity requires a rather elusive quality called "purity". If I were to tell you that I am selling "pure" honey what I'd be saying is that it is just honey, with nothing added or removed. In the same sense, spiritually the word purity means undefiled by desire, ego, or any of the other traits that can hide your soul so completely that you barely can "see" it or feel it's presence. One of the ways in which this happens is narrated in the story of the Sota.

A couple is married. Let's call them Bill and Michelle. Bill notices that Michelle is spending an awful lot of time with Harry, and cautions her against secluding herself with him. At least two valid witnesses testify that Harry and Michelle were in total seclusion. Bill confronts Michelle, who denies that anything forbidden had taken place (we were playing chess, and I  need absolute silence when thinking about the next play…). He doesn’t trust this explanation, and offers her a peaceful divorce. She refuses and maintains her claim of innocence. She is taken to Yerushalaim near the main entrance to the Bais HaMikdash. A screen is erected, and behind it the Kohanim uncover her hair (more on that soon), and if she still doesn’t' want to just accept a divorce, a Divine name is written on parchment, burned, and dissolved in water taken from the special laver (a fancy word for Big Basin) used in the Bais HaMikdash (more on that too). She is forced (if necessary) to drink it. If she was guilty both she and her lover would suffer a terrifying death in which their reproductive organs would swell and rupture causing their death. If she was innocent, she would be blessed by the Kohanim, and continue her marriage. The fate of the adulteress and her lover doesn't concern me as much as the blessing given to the "innocent" woman. The reason that it bothers me is that although she was innocent of adultery, she had defiled the very core of her marriage. Why does she deserve a blessing?

To answer that, let's go back to the laver (kiyor in Hebrew). It was copper, and made out of mirrors that the Jewish women made for themselves in Egypt. They believed profoundly in Hashem, and had faith in life itself being His gift. They knew that whatever they suffered, the end wasn't there yet; they wanted children who would potentially live to see the redemption. They would fashion the mirrors out of copper and polish them until they could see themselves. When their husbands returned from the brutal slavery that both they and their wives had to live with day after day, they would pretty themselves up, and awaken their husband's desire for them. All this after a day of slavery. The mirrors were so precious to Hashem, that He used them as the means of achieving purity in the Bais HaMikdash. The sota was living on opposite terms; she defiled her marriage. The reason she did (even if she didn't commit adultery) is attributed to a cause that is hinted at in the name used to describe her. The word sota has the same root as the word "shtus" which means nonsense or foolishness. The sages say that no one sins unless the spirit of folly enters them. They need to hear enough to deafen them to their souls longing for goodness and purity. In the ritual, one of the things done is uncovering her hair. In MIshneh Brurah, unlike his usual style, the Chofetz Chaim gives us insight into what a married woman's covering her hair says about her, and her marriage. He quotes the Zohar in which several verses of Tehillim are explained. Here is the first one.

"Your wife is a fruitful vine in the corners of your house" Unlike other fruits, grapes can't be grafted with other fruits. In this sense, an ideal wife is dedicated only to her husband, and doesn't display her hair (which is the only part of the body that exists primarily for attraction and is both beautiful and sensual (t.h.)., to the market place of the world. If she does this she draws down all of the blessings from above and below. Her husband will be one of the significant people in his times.

It gives the marriage a dimension of purity that reflects the purity of the women in Egypt. It puts you in touch with your soul.

Let's

Say

You aren't married

And Let' Say

You don't know

DON'T KNOW DON'T KNOW DON'T KNOW

Where your place of purity is.

It's inside you, in your speech and in your heart and in the way you identitfy yourself to the "shuk" of the world through the clothes you wear and the way you let your inner place remain your own.

Dear friends,

Here we are back in real life.

Neve end of the year siyum was (as always) deeply moving and very beautiful. One of the most noteworthy things this year was that the girls spoke less about themselves, the classes, and what they learned from books, and more about how much they learned from each other. They spoke about seeing what Torah looks like when people actually live it…

This was in my mind stowed away yesterday. I walked to the Old City after a class at Neve. The class there took place in the community center, because it far outgrew a living-room venue. There were about seventy women who came because they wanted Shavuos and receiving the Torah to be more experientially alive. One of my favorite students who some of you know, Marianna, celebrated her 95th birthday there by listening attentively and asking a couple of really on the target questions. At about twenty minutes before the sunrise tefillah was going to start we ended, giving everyone enough time to get to the Kotel. An acquaintance in the Rova has an apartment with a rooftop porch overlooking the Kotel plaza and organized a minyan there. Later in the day, the combination of the way these people extended themselves to others by letting them troop through their home at 4:20 am somehow entwined in my half awake half asleep drift during mussaf with my recollections of the Neve siyum.

YOU CHOSE US- yeah. These people know that all of these people on their roof are family.

YOU GAVE US THE DAY OF SHAVUOS (OATHS) We all were there. We all said that we'd do it.

WE ARE DISTANT FROM OUR LAND Not only our land. The girls sometimes come with no sense of who they are and where they started. Living with friends who are ahead by a step or two changes that.

Much later in the day after a long snooze I found myself at an unusual Yom Tov table. My hosts are worldly sophisticated and unusually welcoming and kind. There was a former Israeli general, a hotel executive, the Canon of Baghdad who among his other responsibilities takes care and gives protection to the six remaining Jews in a city that once had a population of over 20,000 Jews. The conversation was fascinating. One of the questions that the host put to us was, "What do you think the perfect world would be like". The answers were predictable. Peace. Fairness to the poor and oppressed. No hunger. Unconditional love towards everyone. He then asked, "Did the Romans or the Greeks achieve any of these goals"? The answer of course was "no". "How about today's governments" The answer was a more emphatic "no". The Torah's laws are laws that give validation to these goals, and generate a lifestyle that makes them come closer to your grasp" the host maintained. The guests took a few seconds to take it in, but in the end agreed.

That took me back to the speeches at the siyum, but at the same time to the many discussions that I had in the computer room with girls who had suffered deeply while they were still In The System. Their parents, or their teachers, or their rabbi had treated them with distain, or emotional distance when they needed validation and trust. Their questions were either trivialized or served as a springboard for "proving" that they were not really One of Us. Of course there were times their own pain blinded them to the fact that the Bad Guys were just doing their best to protect the precious garden that they were committed to guarding. There were other times that this just wasn't the case. The Bad Guys weren’t innocent; they were ego or desire driven. That left me with a question. How come there is such dichotomy between the experience of the girls who spoke at the siyum and the girls who are part of the Nation of the Disenchanted. It suddenly struck me that my host really had it right. Their suffering wasn't caused by the Torah, it was caused by people who consciously or subconsciously made a decision that they would obey only the laws that worked for them emotionally. The ones that demand unselfishness, humility, and self-control were edited out. They stayed with the ones that demanded less from them internally.

Now that it’s the day after Shavuos, it’s a good idea for you to ask yourself what your face to Face encounter with the truth of Torah really means to you. You can change yourself (at your own pace, and with compassion as well as determination) or you can fall into the trap of getting lost because you are unwilling to look at the GPS you just held in your hand. One of the guests will be calling. She wants to learn more, and to see where it gets her….

Have a great summer!

Love,

Tziporah

Dear friends,

Yesterday was the anniversary of the day that Yerushalaim was reuited.

One of the facts that most people in the political world have forgotten is that the original two state solution was one that the U.N. offered to the Arabs in 1948. The plan to divide Palestine into one state for the Jews (which would be called Israel) and another for the Arabs was forcefully rejected by the Arabs, who then united to fight us to the death. The truce that was made left Yerushalaim divided. The left the Old City, what today is Ramat Eshkol, and everything north in Arab hands. Shmuel HaNavi street was bordered what today is Arzei Birah –then a barren no man's land. Abnormal becomes normal very quickly. When I came to learn in seminary in (blush) 1966, the division felt normal. On Tisha B'Av we would go to the roof of the King David hotel, and convince ourselves we could see the Kotel. That summer the Gamal Abdul Nasser, Egypt's leader formed a pan-Arab union and set up to use their new unity to make another attempt to destroy us. Jordan at the time was a less than equal member of the alliance. When the fully expected war began, the Israeli authorities let the Jordanians know that as far as we are concerned, this is not their war, and that as long as they refrain from taking part in the hostilities, there would be no actions taken against them. They refused for reasons that only Hashem, the author of our history will ever fully know. Within a few days the result was that the Kotel had returned to the people who built it and hold it sacred. That Shavuous was unforgettable. No one born after 1948 had ever been to the Kotel.

There was only one word that anyone used; the word was "miracle". No one who was here really thought that it was us-we knew how much the odds were stacked against us. I overheard one of the teachers at my seminary talking to a friend. He said, "Our only hope is that the Americans will step in". Before his friend could reply, my principal, Rav Wolf ztl, said "That isn’t our "only hope". What about Hashem?" I was seventeen at the time, but I wanted to cheer him on, hoping that he would use his famous eloquence to say more, to assure me and to open my heart. Unfortunately that would have given away the fact that I was shamelessly eavesdropping.

Then we sort of got used to it. It began for me with the 2 bus, which ran from Har Nof to the Kotel via the tachanah, Matterdorf, Bar Ilan, Shmuel HaNavi, Shivtei Yisrael, Old City and Kotel. The route took over an hour (about the same time it takes to walk) and left you exhausted. And then there was force of habit, which always deadens the newness of any event. This is one of the reason that I still love watching the delightfully clueless tourists who know what they feel but don't know why. Sometimes the soul wins, and they melt before the ancient stones. I once saw a girl of about seventeen weep as she recited her Bat Mitzvah haftorah again and again. It was probably the only Hebrew words that she knew as sacred. Sometimes the mind wins, and the lack of being able to put feelings into words leaves them with a bunch of Selfies. What they are feeling is a break between their soul's knowledge, and their mind's knowledge. This happens all of the time to all of us. How do you keep the divide from forming, and if it's there, how do you keep it from become a chasm that sometimes is impossible to bridge? One of the thirteen laws of logic used for Talmudic exegesis (what a word! Almost as good as phylacteries or firmament. It means figuring things out) formulated by the Tanna Rabbi Yishmael is Klal uPrat. It means that you have to figure out what the rule is and what the details that come forth from it are, and not confuse the two. The Klal is that Hashem's covenant with us is eternal, that even a cursory glance at our history reveals miracle after miracle. The Prat is how it occurs and what we do in response.

Arguably the Klal that defines our relationship to G-d forever is the word, "Naaseh"- we will do it. The next word, "Nishama" – we will hear it (and seek to understand it) is the ultimate Prat. When the angels heard us say Naaseh first, they delighted. They knew that we understood the greatest of all secrets, which is that the soul knows what it wants and needs-it is to do Hashem's will and experience Him without limiting the experience to our limited perceptions. It has to be followed by willingness to know what His will is, and to understand it as well as we can. When Shavuos arrives, you can reconnect to the Naaseh, and let the Nishma follow you whenever you go to a shiur or learn by yourself and actually carry it out.

I don't personally believe that it was coincidental that the first time throngs of people were able to get to the Kotel was Shavuos. It was a moment of awakening. We didn't know how to bridge the gap between the joy of a miracle that touched everyone's soul and the need to learn what to do with it in the real world.

In Neve many of you felt the Naaseh and at least began the Nishma. You can't recapture the moments of newness but you can take it further wherever you happen to be. Have the best Shavuos ever!

Love,

Tziporah

Dear Friends,

First of all the good news. What a wonderful week! 3 Neve engagements.

The woman who made one of those shidduchin is Dorraine Weiss, who deserves special mention because in so many ways she is a real but non-stereotypical role model. She is around my age (mid hundreds), is formally of L.A., and very much so. Her children learned in Aish there, eventually in AIsh in Eretz Yisrael and now live in Beitar with their wonderful families. She, and her husband Barry didn't want to be left behind spiritually, and they slowly began their journey which took them to making Aliyah. They live in an incredibly interesting and beautiful home (it was featured in the Jerusalem Post) in Abu Tor, a neighborhood between Bakka and the Old City. She solved what some people would have called the "problem" of her aging father by convincing him to join them. He loves it! Instead of spending his days watching TV, he now attends classes at the OU center every morning, is learning and has an entire entourage of friends. He actually (at the age of 95) manages to get there by bus!

At one point Dorraine found herself wondering what the next step for her should be. She did so much, making huge personal changes, Aliyah and learning, but now that she is settled, what new worlds are there for her to conquer? She isn't the type to spend days shopping, lunching, and schmoozing. I encouraged her to be a shadchan. She has wonderful sensitivities and social skills, and is full of chessed (and the entrepreneur in her like the idea of getting paid when she actually sees a couple to the chuppah). She got a list of successful shadchanim, and arranged to meet them to learn the tricks of the trade. Simultaneously she also went online to the frum sites to see their questionnaires in order to figure out how to conduct a shidduch interview. The next step was getting clients. She and her husband are very hospitable, so she began with her guests who came mostly from Aish. Girls came via her friends and their daughter's and from me. She worked hard an entire year. She gives business cards at the end of each interview she had created a three hour interview, in order to be sure that any suggestion that she made would be relevant to who her client is and what they are looking for. If you ever were cross-examined by the FBI, you might know what an interview can be! (She has since refined her method….). Dorraine is even willing to arrange for meetings with her clients in convenient locations (Abu Tor isn't on everyone's inner GPS). Nada. Nothing. Gornisht. Klum. That's what her results were. Lots of near-misses. Some mismatches. No weddings were on her calendar that first year.

What makes this story unique is what happened next.

SHE            DIDN'T           GIVE         UP
The reason that she didn't give up wasn't because she couldn't face having to think of some other mitzvah to fill her time, or because she was so invested in what she started. It was because of only one consideration. She met so many girls (and young men) who really want to get married, and she felt their pain deeply.

Well folks, Sarah's is her tenth shidduch! In honor of this milestone (and also because she is a consummate hostess) she insisted on making the L'I Chaim in her home. She had a lot going on that day, and by the nature of things LiChaim's are kind of last minute. She put it together in just a couple of hours. I finally got to see her home, meet Barry and Papa and see all of the pictures of the grandkids in the area devoted to their photos… It was a most elegant evening and full of the kind of joy that comes when you have no doubts; she was living evidence that the way you want to go is the way Hashem leads you. I told her when she reaches this landmark I would celebrate by taking her out for dinner, so BEH this Wednesday you might catch us out in the fish place on Kanfei.

And yes, this has something to do with Lag B'Omer.

My son Moishe (who some of you know) and his wife Pninah love Lag B'Omer. Getting there with their four little girls (the eldest is six) seemed a formidable task. He decided to see about renting a van, and asked me if any of my friends might want to join them. In the end, four of you guys, two women from the neighborhood and four of Chani's friends (if you don't know my daughter Chani, go back to the cave) all came. It was spacious, air conditioned and the Way to Go. The simchah was in full blast when we arrived. It was sort of between times, so it wasn't even too difficult to enter the actual tomb. The dancing was beyond belief. ON the way home, when we were all tired, I looked around the half sleeping people in the van. Each one of them has a story that took them to being in the van, a story that required determination and uncertain victory. I know most of the stories, some took place in the FSU, or in South America, others are more prosaic and involve making the decision to maximize potentials rather than floating and settling on mediocrity.

I felt the same way when I watched the dancing throngs in Meiron. Most of the crowd were Chassidim, whose parents, grandparents or great grand grandparents were most likely holocaust survivors. Others were Sephardim who had the courage to stick with their emunah in a progressively more secular world. Others still were people whose stories are beyond the limits of my ability to fit them into boxes. It's better that way.

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai invited us all to celebrate with him- he said so expressly in the Zohar. We came and had a blast.

All the best,

Tziporah