Dear friends,

It feels so good to look at mistakes that other people made, take a deep breath, and say, 
“What an idiot”. Be honest. Could you see yourself standing in Korach’s shoes? He lived through the plagues, the splitting of the sea, receiving the Torah. He ate mann every day. Did he really think that Moshe, the man who Hashem selected to bring these earthshattering events into being was a bad choice? Wouldn’t taking over Moshe’s role be that be like me taking over the control tower in a huge airport? If you were there at the time that Moshe announced that Hashem had told him to install Elitzafon (yes, I know you never heard of him) as the leader of the Levites, would you call for new elections?
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Korach was far from a fool. He was blessed with intellectual capacity far greater than anyone you are likely to have encountered. He was fabulously wealthy. He had presence.
His flaw was that he believed in democracy.
Huh?
He argued that no one is inherently “better”. Everyone deserves an equal chance at being whatever they choose to be. It’s a convincing argument. After all, in some ways we are all the same. We all fear loss rejection, pain, failure, poverty and death. We all want acceptance, comfort, success, financial security, and life?  Doesn’t that mean that we are all basically the same?
Not really. From the perspective of the Torah the truth about your identity is far more complex. While you and I have many areas of life that are almost indistinguishable, there are many areas that are non-negotiably different. One is the genetic heritage you carry with you that was determined by Hashem before you were born. This includes specific intellectual and emotional tendencies (some of which have observable genetic markers!). Another individuating factor is the family that Hashem selected for you; your position in the family; the factors that made your mother into the person she was when she saw you the first time; their health, their financial success or lack of financial stability and endless other factors that you didn’t choose. Each of them is part of the environment that was the backdrop for your choices. You also live in your times which are very different than my times. I never faced the horrors of overt anti-Semitism-my older relatives can’t imagine life without its tedious repetitive mind-numbing background music of cliché-ridden hate. You may have grown up in an environment where anti-Semitism is somewhat fashionable. You have your body, your life experiences, the neural channels your choices have engraved on your mind. There never was or will be someone who is your clone. The Talmud put it this way; “How great is the King who mints countless coins, and each one is different”. None of this means that the similarities between you and every human are illusory. They are just as real as the differences, and demand just as much acceptance, direction, and care.

Korach didn’t accept that the differences are real, and that they are purposeful. He wanted leadership. Hashem gave it to Elitzafon.

What are you supposed to think when you feel like a size 9 foot being forced into a size 6 shoe? Why should you be denied a role that feels right, and by your definition of fair, you should have it!
Korach’s father. Yitzhar was the second of Kehat’s sons. Kehat was the most distinguished of Levi’s sons. His first son, Amram, was Moshe, Miriam and Aaron’s father. Amram had two more brothers, Chevron and Uziel. Korach’s expectation was that since Moshe had “taken” the glory for his own nuclear family, (Amram’s children) when the leadership of the tribe of Levi was up for grabs, the fact that his father Yitzhar was the next brother made his choice the most likely one. But it wasn’t’.  Moshe skipped over Yitzhar, and Chevron, and chose Elitzafon, Uziel’s son for the leadership. The way Korach saw this was that Moshe doesn’t want to share power. That’s a good reason for choosing a young leader who was not groomed for the job. Korach maintained that Moshe didn’t want Korach’s great mind, immense wealth and charismatic personality too close to the power base.

Was he wrong?  

Of course, he was wrong. The reason isn’t that nepotism is a great value and must be maintained at all costs. The reason is that only Hashem who authors each individual’s abilities and environment knows the plan he has for each person. Fulfillment comes from living the life that offers you the maximum potential to be yourself. The problem that Korach had, is that he didn’t really know the self he could be. He only knew the self that he was at the time that he decided that he had had enough. Had he waited, there would have been a place for him; a position called Levi Gadol, the High Levite, a position much like that of the Kohein Gadol High priest) would have emerged. Hashem had a pair of size 9 shoes waiting for the day that Korach could step into them.

You can choose to be Korach, or you could choose to be Moshe. 

Interestingly, Korach, who was fighting for the fulfillment of his own ambition destroyed himself and everything that he touched. Moshe was very much his opposite. To him, the only question worth thinking about when he was faced with choices, was what does Hashem want NOW.

Korach was convinced that he was acting “leshem Shamayim” for the sake of heaven. He wanted spiritual self-expression on the highest level, and encouraged others to do the same. The result was disaster.
The earth swallowed up Korach and his followers. Th reason is that fomenting this brand of discontent is a crime against the earth itself. The earth was given to us humans to turn it into a place of profound spiritual beauty. The way this happens is by negation of ego, and focusing on what Hashem gives us. Moshe was the humblest of men. He could know what Hashem wants of him through seeing reality through a clear lense, devoid of ego or any prism of self. He was a living GPS heading towards where we were meant to be.
In Pirkei avot we are asked to refrain from disagreement. Sometimes a disagreement that has a core of being leshem Shamayim is ‘captured’ by ego, desire and the rest of the choir.  Disagreement where there is no emotional agenda is an entirely different matter. It is called ‘search for truth” and is the key to all serious learning.

Where does your search for truth lead? You are all different and simultaneously you are all similar. If you are sincere, you won’t all get the same answers., but you will look to the Torah for your truth. The vast majority of fragmentation within the Jewish people comes not from hearing different answers, but from looking for answers in the wrong places. 

Recently, we have been living in a world in which humans are no longer in control and have been forced into seeing this with overwhelming clarity. Maybe we can learn not only to ask the right questions, but to look in the right places, and surprise ourselves when Moshiach arrives – may it be soon! 

Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

One of the most annoying things about Covid19 is that it just hasn’t taken its leave of us as yet. Did you realize that months, not weeks, would pass, without life returning to normal?  Just two weeks ago, when my husband and I went out (YES OUT!! WHAT A DELIGHT!) to Machaneh Yehudah Market (which was permitted according to the instructions given by the Ministry of Health), we were duly masked and gloved. When we entered the shuk on Thursday one of the locals looked at the half empty lanes of the marketplace that usually can be navigated only by native Israel’s and folks from Brooklyn. It had taken on an almost Mid-Western patina of civility. He looked at us  and said, “That’s it, Corona is finished”.  Within a few days, it was permitted to go to shul (with restrictions), to send you kids to school, and to eat out if that’s your thing. 

Then we heard that numbers of people infected are rising. Whether it’s because you really need more isolation to get rid of it once and for all, or whether there are other factors involved with we are not yet familiar, one question still needs to be answered; where is the demarcation line separating your trust in the One who created you (and every microbe that will ever exist), and your responsibility in taking care of yourself, not just in this situation but in all situations. 

Is taking an attitude of “what will be will be for the best” the right way to go, or should you perhaps not be so dismissive of the voice that demands your taking the steering wheel into your own hands?
 
POSSIBLITY ONE: LET GO
YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE.

Ramban maintains that in the case of one of Avraham’s tests, his failure (Ramban’s words, not mine) to let go and surrender to Hashem affects us still today. The imprint on the future that most of us would see as negative is indelible.

Just stand in Avraham’s shoes for a moment. Avraham and Sarah left Ur Kasim (which is in today’s Iraq) after he had faced being burned to death and rescued from that fate miraculously.  They then headed out to Haran, where he and Sara succeeded beyond anything they could have dreamed of. Thousands of people came under their influence, and began to believe in one God. At that point, almost inexplicably, Hashem told him to leave everything behind; He also told him that the result of making the choice would be children, money, fame, and the key to giving blessings to others. He left with Sara, Lot, and their followers, and when they arrived in Israel, not only didn’t they experience the blessings that they had every reason to anticipate, they actually found themselves starving. They ultimately only had two choices; go or stay. 

Avraham chose to leave. Ramban tells you that this was a terrible mistake. He should have trusted that Hashem can cover His checks… This is important for us, because the patriarchs and matriarchs related to their future generations the way a foundation relates to a building. A flaw in the foundation that is barely visible at floor level, can result in the Leaning Tower of Pisa! You can only give what you have, and Avraham and Sara didn’t have the absolute faith in Hashem that could have changed things for their descendants. “The deeds of the patriarchs are a sign for their children” Ramban famously quotes. They left Egypt in the face of a famine, and so did their children two generations later when Yaakov and his family had to leave Israel because they were starving. Avraham and Sara found themselves under the Egyptian oppression when Sara was taken by force, and their descendants experience oppression of slavery in the same country, but much much more severely. Had he had the faith to remain in Israel, Ramban concludes, none of this would be necessary. 

That means, in plain language, that Avraham should have stayed in Eretz Yisrael and trusted that the One who told him to go there, would save him from the famine.

POSSIBLITY TWO: BE RESPONSIBLE
YOU MAY NOT TAKE THE GIFT OF HAVING CHOICES LIGHTLY

The Torah tells you to guard your life, “Very much”. Don’t endanger yourself or take your life lightly. It is a precious and irreplaceable gift. Shmuel, the second greatest prophet of all times, was told by Hashem to anoint David (later to be King David) as king. There was only one problem. The reigning king, Shaul, had no intent of surrendering his crown, and was doing everything human (and some would argue inhumanely) possible to prevent David from usurping the throne. As far as he was concerned, Israel already had a king, namely himself, (Shaul) and the job of reigning monarch was not one with openings. Shmuel didn’t do what would have been most simple. He didn’t just go and hope for the best. He told Hashem. “What will be? If Shaul finds out he’ll kill me’ The response was for him to take a wagon and tell whatever troops he comes into contact with that he is headed towards David’s fathers’ home and was coming to offer sacrifices. He was not rebuked by Hashem, for not having sufficient trust in Him to just tell the truth and risk Shaul’s uncontrollable anger., nor is there any talk of this having brought about anything dire in future generations. He was acting responsibly; he said whatever he had to say to avoid endangering himself. He was pro-active.
It seems that the two stories are two opposing ways of seeing the unrelenting war between the voice that tells you that the way you want to go is in trusting  completely and sincerely, and the answering voice says that you are obligated to be responsible enough to treat your life as the precious gift that is.

THE BOTTOM LINE
The spies that Moshe sent, were our example of making the wrong kind of choice. They were not just doing what they had to do in order to figure the best way to move forward. That would have been good. Instead they editorialized the entire 40 days of their journey to death. It stopped being a practical approach to entering Israel, and became an anxiety ridden journey away from Hashem.  If they had just been less reluctant to trust Hashem’s explicit promise to be on their side, things would have been very very different.     

NOW FOR YOU
Your soul was sent down to this world for the sake of doing a mission. If you are doing whatever you have to do (find a shidduch, earn a living, deal with difficult people etc), with integrity, and then ONCE YOU HAVE DONE YOUR PART step quietly back. Move away from obsessive flashbacks to trust.
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HAVE only simchah, faith, and nachas.

Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

Shavuos has passed, and we will be having quite a dry spell before there are any new times of renewal. Does that mean that you are doomed to a several month spell of FOMO?

Sort of…

The best time of all is real life. That's where you give birth to yourself, and let the true you emerge. One of the ways in which your choices happen is by stepping back and figuring out what your priorities really are. There is a bit of Gemarah that says, “Rabba bar Machsya says that Rav Chamma bar Guria says that any city that has the roofs higher than the roofs of the synagogues will eventually be destroyed as it says, “To trample Hashem’s house and to establish its destroyed places”

The reason that I gave you an exact quote is that there are quite a few things that you can see in it that may change your focus. One is that everything here is attributed. I don’t much about Rav Machsya and even less about Rav Chamma, but there is one thing that I do know; Rav Machsya was an amorah, a teacher in the Talmudic era, someone who was close to the Oral Law in ways that I will never know. He had the opportunity to meet with and observe people who were one step closer to Sinai, and who had direct linkage with those before them. It doesn’t just take you back to Moshe, it takes you all the way back to the One who gave the Torah, who is the same One who created the world. 

When  you look around you or (for those of you who like this sort of thing) when you learn about the incredible intricacy of literally everything physical, you see the Hand of a giver, the One who wants you to live and interpret His world in ways that give you meaning, you know this because he chose to make you a human being.

Humans are the top of the pyramid, but we are simultaneously the only ones who could choose not to find their place. Everything in the world is still connected to its source just as much as it was on the day it was created. You are no exception. Your body, soul and evolving history are connected to Hashem. Every choice can get you closer to the One who creates life every second, or distance you. The scholars of the Talmud chose to learn, to explore, and to ultimately share what a human can know of the pattern that governs every choice you can possibly make.  

Here they talk about living in a city; a topic which is not an easy one just now.

I am aware, that as I write this, the incredibly painful destruction takes place every night in many of Americas metropolises. Wanton, heartless destruction, surrounds you if you go out to see the scene. It didn’t come out of nowhere - there is history that has to be confronted. From the perspective of the Talmud, one thing must be said.

The fact that there is rage doesn’t mean that its offshoot is justice. There is nothing remotely resembling justice in looting a Gucci bag or a large-TV screen.

The voice of anger is always the same. This can be true of genuinely justified anger (Imagine the anger a parent would feel if their child was murdered), or trivial anger (the kind that you feel when you find yourself asking, “how dare he park where I wanted to park”). The voice says, “This isn’t how it should be; it should be the way I want it to be”. The underlying assumption is, of course, that the way you want “it” to be must be right.

How can you know?

The Talmud says that the beginning of the destruction of a city is when the roofs of the local buildings are higher than the roofs of the synagogues. Maharal explains this by saying that spiritual reality is inherently more exalted than material reality. That would mean that values that are eternal (and you can only know what they are from the Torah) have to be seen as transcending material reality. What happens when this is reversed? When questions of what morality really means are not asked? You have a situation evolve in which the purpose of life, its Source and its meaning are forgotten. What is remembered is how good material pleasure feels, how loud the desire for status talks, and how marvelous it feels to experience a little righteous indignation. This mixture is what you see every night. To use Maharal’s words; “lowliness is a part of the physical world (it was created to follow, not to lead);  exaltation belongs to the non-physical world. When you reverse this, the inherent plan Hashem had for the world and order for the world that the Torah reveals, is destroyed”.

What does this mean in plain language? It means that the indignation about a murder (which, needless to say is part of the Torah’s system, and reflective of valuing the true worth of human life) is just. Looting, violence towards the law officers (whose lives are not less valuable than that of Floyd), are not part of this system. It is part of another system, one in which whoever is most vicious wins. It’s a perversion of what being human is all about.

What does this have to do with you?

Do you always put the right things first? I try to, but I don’t always succeed. The immediacy and the here and now nature of living in a way in which grabbing for what you want gives you instant pleasure is sometimes overwhelming. It can be the pleasure of saying what shouldn’t be said because it feels so good, or doing something that shouldn’t be done for the same reason. 

Here’s the good news. Once you know who you don’t want to be, you are much closer to being who you do want to be. We have all summer to practice!
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Love,
Tziporah Gottlieb (can’ya believe it? I am still floating