​Dear friends,

I went back to calling you all friends, whether or not you are students, old friends or new ones, or people who I just learned recently (no, that wasn’t a typo. Learning people is the best kind of learning that there is).

I was at the Kotel last night. It was Tisha B’Av. The mood there changes  quickly and radically at about 7:00. There were thousands of people who were there mourning, wishing that they could mourn. There were also a large contingent of people who feel deep connection to the place, the People, and want to find their moment of meaning at the Wall. The solemnity suddenly gave way to a feeling connection, unity, and love. A large circle formed holding with strangers from observably different points of departure holding hands and singing softly. More and more people streamed into the plaza. The time moved unbelievably quickly, and the singing gave way to saying maariv (the night prayers). Everyone was facing the Wall, and not facing each other any longer. Then it was over.

Everyone was headed home to break the fast. Except those who weren’t. There were suddenly significant numbers of people giving out food! Water bottles came out of nowhere, trays of cake, and rugelach. The people who were giving the food away (after others made Havdalah ) must have had the food with them all day. That means they thought about it before they headed to the Old City. That meant that they either took it with them on the bus or had it in their cars knowing that on a day like Tisha B’Av parking means a significant walk from your space till you are in the plaza. They wanted to end the fast by giving.

I was moved by these newly hatched friends of mine, who I may never see again and probably didn’t see before they offered me their food. Their outstretched hands taught me who they are.

Earlier in the day we read Kinnot, the poems of mourning that were written throughout the years. Names that meant so much now ring hollow. When was the last time that you thought about Wormza (Worms)? Our history is so strange. You find yourself detaching from the endless narrations of Life In Exile because it so much easier and so much more natural. When you talk about the holocaust subconsciously you find yourself relegating it to a dusty unpleasant attic. Names like Buchenwald send me to auto-delete. You are where your mind is, as the Baal Shem Tov would say, and who wants to be there?

Then every so often you remember that these people were real. Some of them were probably like the people who schlepped boxes of water bottles to the Kotel. A recurrent theme in the Kinnot is that the suffering (there! I wrote it. I was so sure that I wouldn’t go there. Everyone is so sick of suffering, talking about it and feeling it) touched the lives of people who never never dreamed that this would be the way their lives play out.

Another recurring theme is that the source of our 2000-year exile is senseless hatred. The only way to reverse it is to be less afraid of loving other Jewish people before they proved that they “deserve” it. If you dedicate your life to being comfortable, that will turn into Mission Impossible.

Loving people means being vulnerable, being adventurous, and being willing to shlepp bottles. It means being bigger than you are now.  The enemy is fear. Fear of discomfort, fear of rejection, fear of feeling foolish. Being small, petty, and afraid is much much worse.

One rule helps. You can only look for G-dliness in other people if you have some sense of what the word means. One way to become more sensitive to this is tracking the times that you surprise yourself by going beyond your comfort level. The times that you reach out, the times that you give. It all comes down to seeing something real and enduring when you see other people. If you can see the soul, the body becomes more and more irrelevant. Think about when you didn’t stop because the other person is different, unappealing physically or just not your speed.  Then move it up. Think of the times that you actually seek Hashem by doing mitzvos that don’t come your way easily. If you can see someone G-dly when you look in the mirror, it will be easier to see the same invisible markings when you see other people.
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Love,
Tziporah
 
 

Dear friends,
The feeling of being in the three weeks is deepening.

This week will be Rosh Chodesh Av. The two letters of the word Av, aleph and bet, are sometimes presented as an acronym for Av, uBen. A father and a son. This month is the one in which we are in a position that is arguably like the worst of bad scenarios when you think of a parent child relationship.

Some of you have children and some of you don’t. You all once were children, and if you can take yourself back as early as you can remember, to the days when you were small, and what you wanted more than you wanted anything else was your parent’s showing you how much they love you, approve of you, and enjoy you.

I still recall my first rejection. There were many times before this incident that my parents said no to me. The way I interpreted the “no” was that they are not giving me what I want. It wasn’t about me: it was their refusal to give me what I wanted. There’s room for emotional distancing when that happens. Rejection is something else. They were playing a game of cards in my grandmother’s house. I wanted to be included, like my cousin Larry who was several years older than me. They didn’t want me. It wasn’t that there wasn’t room at the table. It wasn’t that there weren’t enough cards. They didn’t want me. I didn’t know the rules of the game, and they saw (accurately) that trying to explain poker to a four year old wouldn’t work.

I felt the unspoken message. “You aren’t smart enough, or with it enough, or fast enough. We don’t want to ruin our game by bringing down to your level”. I can still conjure up the pain. There were so many times both before and afterwards that their love was tangible, real and warm, that of course the poker game was filed away. It still gave me the means of defining the word “rejection”. Rejecting a child on any level is far worse. A friend of mine, Chasya Chana, had polio as a child. In those years (over 60 years ago) the medical community believed that the child patient had to live in a facility and see her parents only an infrequent interval. When she would speak about those years (yes, years!) there was always an edge of sadness. Surprisingly there was never embitterment; she never doubted her parents love. When you step into her parent’s shoes, you feel something else. Imagine what it is to leave a child with strangers. You know better than she knows how much your love will be missed.

There is an even worse scenario. Imagine having to ask your own child to leave your home. He is violent, dishonest, addicted to who knows what, and chronically enraged. It’s no longer safe for the other children to be around him. You did all the right moves, ranging from therapies “guaranteed” to work to those that offer a one in a million chance of success. After the door finally slams shut, there is a silence that you knew would not give you peace. Time goes on, and except for periodical calls asking you for money, there isn’t any real contact. One day there’s a knock on the door. It’s him. You open the door a crack, not knowing what will happen next. He tells you the words that you had been longing to hear for literally years. “Ma, now things will be different. I found a job. A rabbi. A therapist.”

We are so estranged! The word Zion literally means “distinct”. We were once a people who were distinctly representative of what humans could be. Our homeland was the center of all moral development. Look how far we are from what we were once. In Eichah, Eretz Yisrael was compared to a field in which the watchman’s boot has been abandoned-there is nothing worth guarding. When you look at how distant we have become, you can think that this is the story of our present life. Eretz Yisrael which should be our core and center is completely delegitimized. Our uniqueness is under fire. Calling yourself a member of the Chosen People is so politically incorrect that it is off the page.

But we are still His children.

He still loves us and knows who we are underneath the burden of thousands of years of suffering hatred, self-destructive assimilation and worst of all endless confusion both personally and as a nation.

He sees what we don’t see.

He loves us more than we will ever love ourselves.

My daughter Devora organized a tefillah for geulah trip for mothers and daughters this coming Tuesday. We will go to the tombs of tsaddikim to daven for the geulah.

The tsaddikim are the windows that open up new vistas. Their merit and their example let us rediscover ourselves. We will be going to Har Menuchos, to the graves of R. Shlomo Zalman Aurebach, R. Mordechai Eliahu, the Chida, R. Moshe Feinstein, the Belzer Rebbe and others. I will tell short stories about their lives. We will also go to the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik and the Rebbe of Zhvill. If you are in Yerushalayim, this is a good opportunity to join with other women (whether you have a daughter, are a daughter, or are “just “Hashem’s daughter) to use this time for what it is, a time of renewed closeness.

Devora’s number is 08 974 3013.

Love,
Tziporah
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