Dear Friends, 

Mark Twain is said to have commented that a people who still mourn a loss that took place thousands of years ago, is a people whose vision will one day be fulfilled.

In the meantime, Hashem’s plan for us to live in a world defined by peace and goodness is not what we see actualized when we look around us. The chaos ranges; Palestinian frenzied and homicidal response to the installation of metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount is one example. They expect us to respond to the fact that they Al Aqsa it as a cache for weapons used in a double murder as though nothing happened. The chaos continued when on the following Friday night they entered a stranger’s home turning a shalom zachor into a bloodbath.

This morning, Rosh Chodesh Av, Leah Aharoni (the woman who, a couple of years ago had called on the SEM girls to come en masse to the Kotel to express our deep connection to the holiest place in the world) had asked those of us who could make it to come again. The purpose was to have a respectful and serious prayer, one that would break through the disunity that threatens to destroy us, and return the basic respect to the Kotel as a place of tradition and worship. It didn’t turn out that way.  More chaos. The Women of The Wall, comfortable as always as the Rosa Parks of the 21st century, bringing enlighten and tolerance to the savages by singing songs of peace and unity as they do everything possible to disrupt the peace and unity that the Kotel has on the 29 days of the month that they are not there. They were met by tens of young girls who covered their faces with thin scarves to disguise the whistles that they used to disrupt the WOW service. The two sets of Holy Warriors turned the Kotel plaza into anything but the respectful tefillah that may have changed darkness to light.  Wherever you look you see darkness, and feel the pain of futility. The easy out is to content yourself with pointing your finger at the Bad Guys. The problem is that accusing the people who perpetrate further and further descent into spiritual oblivion doesn’t change anything. In fact, it is a distraction from what is real.

What is real is the fact that the only genuine answer to destruction is building, and the only genuine answer to ignorance is learning and teaching, and the only genuine response to hatred is love. There is a real and significant difference between love and acceptance of darkness as an alternative reality. This divide is what separates eternity from oblivion. When you ask yourself who you like and admire, invariably you will end up choosing people in whom you see beauty beyond the range of their status and their possessions. You see their kindness, loyalty, sensitivity, brilliance. This is just another way of saying that you see their souls, not their bodies or their possessions. What you really like is Hashem’s presence within them.
When you were born, you couldn’t see that far. The people you loved when you were three earned their love by loving you. Today, you can see further. You can see what is inherently good and worthy in them, and the more acutely you see what is good and worthy in you, the easier it is to love them. When you don’t the subconscious need to compete can easily get in your way. If they are number one, that makes me number two, and who wants to come in second?
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If you learn to ask new questions, how can I build?  When one side tosses the only Plan we have aside, you have to look beyond the tragedy of the consequences that they bring about. We are all stuck with our pettiness, and our relentless attraction to status and ownership. We are also stuck with our basic insecurities. How do you move on?  The first step is to move beyond your ego and learn to see Hashem’s plan as the only one that transcends self. You have to let it touch you and define your choices.
One way is to move from the inside out. The other is moving from the outside in, which is far easier as a start. What I am suggesting is Fake it Till You Make It.

Did you feel the moments of horror and pain that afflicted the family that was massacred Friday night?   Send them a letter. The name and address is Solomon Family, Rechov Rashi 23, Elad.  If that’s not your style, say a perek of Tehillim.

This doesn’t just apply to your relationship with victims of tragedy. If you don’t like your (fill in the blank) in-laws, the shadchan who introduces you to people you would never want to know, your neighbor who thinks that he lives in the desert, etc. Fake It. Force your eye to see what is inside. Say “Hi-what’s up”. 
During the time that the Bais HaMikdash existed, the sacrifices had the effect of letting the “animal self” the self that is as separate from any other person as any animal’s ”self” is from any other animal. They have no sense of companionship because there is no bond between them beyond the preservation of their species. When you discover the beast within you, you can then use its energies to make the bond between you and other people stronger...

The news isn’t all bad!

Tuesday night thousands of women focused on self-change. Not be making contact with the animal self, but by making contact with the most human aspect of who we are. Nothing reveals your true self more than the way you communicate. Thousands of Jerusalem’s women got together in binyanei umah, Yerushalaim’s largest convention hall for an evening dedicating to learning how to change your communication from something base to something holy. Next week’s letter will give you a rundown of the evening.

In the meantime just focus on how much chaos melt away if everyone who came to listen, actually keep what they hear.

Love,
Tziporah  

Dear Friends,
​
Leah Aharoni, the woman who spearhead the "Women FOR the Wall movement"
is holding a respectful tefillah to the One who is the ultimate authority and the baal harachamim
(read interview in Hamodia).

The Tefillah will be at the Kosel at 7.00am on Rosh Chodesh Av, Monday 24th July 2017

In the light of the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court, who has consistently voted against
everything in which the kedush of the Kosel was at stake, who can't feel the pain of the
current reality where secular judges are called upon to determine whether halacha should
be upheld and tradition respected?

Please share this with friends and family, neighbourhood newsletters and, of course, consult with
your Rav - nothing could be more in tune with this idea.

yours,
Tziporah

​Dear Friends

Do you drive? I don’t, at least not in the sense that implies actually getting a vehicle to move from one place to another one. I am really an expert backseat driver. I usually keep my observations to myself (why don’t you just pass him? Aren’t you going too fast (or too slow)) because over the years I have not always been thanked as profusely or as eloquently as I would liked for my unceasing flow of helpful comments  and constructive criticism.

Imagine being on a highway with next to no traffic. No lights. No hassles. No ambiguous signs. Perfect weather. In case you didn’t notice.
Life isn’t like that.

It was never meant to be an easy ride. It’s meant to be challenging and full of unexpected curves. Your sense of entitlement can make this seem unfair at best and nihilistic at worst. Our history over the last 2,000 years was predicted in the Chumash. It may not be an easy ride, but there is nothing unexpected about it. Sometimes the ride is so rocky that it feels unbearable. Sometimes the drivers you encounter seem to be superman ‘wannabees’ . There are outside events and people you meet on the way who leave you reeling.

The Talmud tells a story about a man whose path took him to oblivion. What started as a mere pot hole, ended up in a catastrophe that still touches your life and mine. His name was Kamtza, which literally means the man who grasped things in his fist; the man who couldn’t or didn’t want to let go. Every year at this time I find myself focused (still again) on the Kamtza Bar Kamtza story. In short, a man, Kamtza, received an invitation meant for someone else with an almost identical name, Bar-Kamtza. The result was his arriving as an unwanted guest at a party held by his enemy. He was thrown out, and in revenge (against his host, but even more against the silence of people who should have prevented his public humiliation) he engineered a plot. He tried to convince the authorities to persecute the Jews (yes, his own people) by telling them that the Jews are rebelling. To prove his accusation, he suggested that a Roman acquaintance bring a sacrifice to the Holy Temple. When he agreed, Kamtza secretly entered the pen where the animal was held, and either slit its lip or its eye, thus invalidating it as an offering. It was rejected, the Romans began their war against us, and the result is the exile that is still our reality.

Many of you have heard this innumerable times before, and even for those of you who are hearing it the first time, there are a number of questions you can ask. The first and most significant one is what does this have to do with me and my life. I don’t throw people out of my home (do you invite them in?  hmmmm). I don’t plot against the entire Jewish people. There are various insights, and I want to share one with you.
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At the end of his classical ‘Moreh Nevuchim’ (Guide to the Perplexed), Rambam opens the door to understanding the many anthropomorphisms that the Torah uses. What do we mean when we say, “Hashem’s eye” or His “Outstretched arm”? His approach is to analyze the way we use these organs to grasp the subtle messages hidden deep within the metaphor. What exactly is an eye’s function? The easiest answer is “to see”, but move inward. What is sight for? It brings the outer world into your inner world for you to interpret and to determine what your response should be. This happens so fast that you don’t even notice it happening. When you speak about Hashem’s eye, you are talking about His providence, and His ability to observe every atom and the entire cosmos simultaneously, and to form responses immediately. We humans are made in G-d’s image. We can also learn to “see” what reality really is. When you as a human have what the sages would call a “good eye” it means that you integrate reality with spiritual depth in how you look at the other person. You get in touch with your intent to see things positively and to respond from there. According to those who maintain that the injury that Kamtza made to the animal involved the eye; his message has a specific meaning. The sacrifices are called ‘korbanot’, which comes from the word karov, which means “near”.  You can only talk about bringing something near, if it is distant. Nothing is further from your higher self than your base instincts, your animal soul. Your animal soul ‘”sees” things superficially. Having an ayin tovah, a ‘good eye’ means looking beyond the surface, and seeing what is good in the other person you are observing. The next step inevitably is reflected by the way you speak about them. Your words are “you”, the fruit of your thoughts.

Kamtza’s next choice was tragic. His response to insult was to obsess about it.  “You don’t really see me. You don’t speak well of me. You treat me as though I have no significance.” His hatred towards those who slighted him was so great that he no longer cared about what the effect of his decision to take revenge would be. He doomed an entire people to appease his egocentric need for validation, acknowledgment and appreciation. The fact that he was right is completely irrelevant.  His plot was the trigger for the Roman oppression, the subsequent destruction of the Holy Temple, the exile in which we suffered innumerable deaths, maiming’s, enslavements, and far more.

The moral of the story is :
Don’t hate. - Even when you are right.
Even if “they” should have known better. Just don’t hate.
Try the opposite. Try to like people.
Even when they are wrong. Even when they are ignorant.
Just like them because they are part of the people that G-d chose.

Maybe next year the story will be old hat, boring and irrelevant.
Love,
Tziporah 

Dear friends,

What makes this letter fun is that (as some of you know) it goes out to quite a variety of my friends. They range from my dear sem girls, to Neve students current and far less so, to some acquaintances who are Very Frum and some who are definitely not, besides a sprinklingof relatives and friends from various episodes in the Ongoing Drama life.

Last week I sincerely wish that I could have had you all with me. Each one of you belongs at the places that I saw. I was in the south and in the north on a sort of pilgrimage to the places where the great tzadikim of Eretz Yisrael are buried. This journey took me to Chevron, Netivot, Sajour (a Druze village where Rabi Yishmael Kohen Gadol is buried), Pekiin where the cave that Rabi Shimon Bar Yochai hid for 13 years is buried deep in a carob forest, Tiveria where we stood before Rabi Akiva and the Ramchal (author of Path of the Just), and finally the ongoing feast and festival that takes place more or less constantly at the tomb of Rabi Meir in Tiveria.  As some of you know, I had been going to Uman that last few years. The time had come to go back to where things started.

Why kivrei tzadikim?

One of the most evocative lines in shir HaShirim is “The King brought me into His chambers”. In context, this means that Hashem, the ultimate King has given his beloved People the privilege to enter a relationship that is intimate. Knowing someone physically is nowhere near as close and personal as knowing their inner thoughts and feelings. The Torah is Hashem’s will and His wisdom, when you learn, both your mind and His share thoughts and assumptions about life and far far more. Tanna D’Vei Eliahu, an early Midrash explains the verse as meaning that each person has their own chamber, their own unique path in knowing G-d. Each chamber is unlike any other chamber. The chamber of each tzadik reveals his closeness to Hashem. Because tzadikim use their bodies to express their souls, there is a degree of connection that you can experience when you are at their resting places. The first place that we went to were the tombs of Ruth and Yishai, who are buried together on a hill that overlooks the Mearat Hamachpeilah (tomb of the patriarchal and matriarchs in Chevron). There are a few Jewish houses as you approach the top of the hill, and some archeological findings in what is called Tel Romeidah. When you get to the peak, there is a military structure with two flights of stairs that take you to a quiet beautiful stretch that is surprisingly flat. The tombs are side by side. I had been there many times, but this time was different. I large group of Russian Jews made their way up just as we arrived. They were so moved when their guide gave them insight into what a bridge between now and our early history. I can only imagine the nachas that Ruth and Yishai had in seeing their long lost children return to the city where their son and grandson, David, began his rule.

From there we went to the Mearah itself. As always, once you go up the stairs time doesn’t exist anymore. You are there with the bigger than life figures who live inside of you. I never knew quite what to do with this feeling. This year, I saw a new sefer by Rav Gamliel on the holy sites in Israel. He writes that when you enter a place like this, there are practices that you can do to give the experience greater force and meaning. The first thing is to give a bit of tzedakah. This takes you into the headset of giving and of spirituality than getting and physical sensation. You then light a candle (virtually all of the holy places have metal stands where candles can be set down after they are lit). This is to affirm that you see clearly that the human soul is Hashem’s candle. The tzadikim shed enormous light. Then you offer a short tefillah to Hashem asking that He give you the ability to know what to say, and what to be as you stand there. After that, it’s time to step back into yourself and reflect on what these lives really tell you about your own life. If you can study something about them from the Torah, you will bring more merit both to yourself and to them. Finally you ask for what you can take on yourself (even something very small, even very temporarily) in their merit. Then you are ready to begin to pray.

After we davened (for an hour which felt like a minute) we all went down to eat. There is now a large well lit and nicely furnished room (with a coffee urn, cold water, long tables and white plastic chairs) where you can eat lunch, have sheva brachos, celebrate a bris, or any other use that you can think of, all for no payment whatsoever. Very Avrahamic.

From there we got back on the bus and headed south. The desert speaks its own language, and some of us could hear it, while most of us either slept or listened to the music that the driver put on for us. We finally arrived in Netivot; the kever of Baba Sali is there. A booklet was on the table. It had a brief narrative of his life’s story. He was born to four generations of famous scholars and kabbalists. He imitated their practices from his mid childhood. The Kings of Morocco venerate the rabbis, but when almost all of the Jews of Morocco left to make aliya to Israel, he was there with his people. He chose to settle in Netivot, a desert settlement town. When we arrived at our destination the Moshav Bar Yochai about 10 minutes from Meiron we were exhausted.  A good meal, a morning swim and an unbelievable tefillah in Meiron, and we were off!

The reason I am telling you all of this (and will tell you more next week!) is that I love you, wish you were with me, and want to take you there vicariously. The chambers are open, real, and easy to access even by hearing about them.

Love,
Tziporah