​Dear Friends,

I spent Shabbos with relatives who live on a tiny quiet yishuv in the midst of high mountains, a view of the entire country, and the kind of silence that you never hear in the city. The entire yishuv has a few more than 200 families. They live in individual homes, on unmarked streets (more correctly one of two possible streets) and being Jewish of course have three synagogues! Their version of a night out is going to the "restaurant" which is owned by an older woman who enjoys baking a small cake every day. She then serves it with coffee or tea in her very beautiful living room. Complete with a view. Since everyone is completely frum, Shabbos means that there is real silence. There is no sound of traffic; no dull electric buzz There is nothing happening except Torah, tefillah and visiting. My family there has three little girls. The oldest took herself to shul in the morning (a good 10 minute walk). No one was surprised to see her. The littlest (who isn't two but who speaks mini-sentences (three words or less) toddled over to a neighbor and said "chalav". They gave her a bag of milk, and she went home with it exactly as she was instructed to do. The middle one came home from Gan early because (in her words) "I asked Mimi for a hitch". That was too much even for my laid-back relatives; a three-year-old hitchhiking under the guidance of her five-year-old sister? I never saw children as independent and secure as they are.

When I told my friends where I would be for Shabbos, they asked me "Aren't you afraid to go out there?"  
Every fear is relative.

The reason that I am telling you about my Shabbos in Never Never land, is that your assumptions about life, like mine, are based on your experience. The word "normal" is one that just reflects what you were taught somewhere between the ages of four and seven. When I grew up in Brooklyn, no one would send a young child out alone. My graddaughter in Monsey told me that it is in fact illegal to leave children alone even in their own homes without an adult who is at least 18. This posed a problem to her when she watched her siblings at 17…The reason in both cases is that the danger of letting a child out on his own in N.Y. is real. There's traffic… and worse. No one can forget the tragic and terrifying days that passed just a few years ago when a child went missing in the short space between the area where his school bus let him off, and his home. His death was cruel, but in honesty not completely unexpected. The children on the ysishuv also face danger. The entire area is surrounded by a fence and is guarded 24 hours a day. No child can get in or out without being seen by a soldier or one of the men who stand guard duty along with them. Nonetheless, facing danger from the outside, from who speak another language, and are not part of your daily life, seems (at least to me) to be easier than not trusting people who are indistinguishable from the people you have every reason to love.

The worst thing that can happen, from this perspective, is when you can't trust Hashem.
For all sorts of reasons some of you see Hashem as an enemy, One who is going to afflict you with uninterpretable events happening at a rapid pace, or choking you with laws that restrict your desires and goals.

No one is closer to you than Hashem.

This past week's Parshah, Ve"eschanan, begins with Moshe pleading with Hashem to allow him to enter Eretz Yisrael. He offered hundreds of prayers, but he was denied entrance to the Land.  This didn't change his relationship to Hashem. You can trace the underlying pattern by focusing on the word that the Torah uses to describe the manner in which he prayed.  The word that is used is "veschanan" which is a word that Rashi explains is being rooted in the word "chinam", which means "for free". Rashi quotes Sifri, which says, "The Jews had two great leaders, Moshe and King David. They could have made requests from Hashem bases on their good deeds, but they never did. They asked for "free gifts". We should learn that if people of this stature don't rely on their merits, how much more so people on our level should only ask for gifts that are given out of G-d's grace, gifts that are given for free."

Taking a deeper look, you may come to realize that Hashem doesn’t owe you anything.  A mother might tell her two-year-old that if she eats nicely and doesn’t throw her food off the highchair tray, she will get a treat. The fact is that eating is to the child's benefit. Throwing food of the tray is not. The reward is just a means of helping her child overcome impulsivity. It isn't as though the child performed a service to her mother that benefits the mother). Similarly, when Hashem gives you opportunities to generate what the Arizal calls "an awakening from below”. This means that He may offer you the potential to awaken your latent emunah in Hashem when things are uninterpretable or your trust in Him when the mitzvos are challenging. These two responses come from the deepest part of you, and can change you more authentically than any other means of growth.

Once you open your heart to this, you will realize that you are always completely understood, completely validated, and most of all completely beloved. Your life is a free gift, and every aspect of your life is a reflection of Hashem's belief in you.

The Parshah repeats two mitzvos that I know some of you find awesomely difficult. One is honoring your parents, and the other is not envying other people's lives. They are (respectively) the last of the first five, which were on one side of the tablets, and the last of the second five, which were on the other side of the tablets. The reason for this is far from coincidental. These are the ones that are the most difficult to approach. The ones that generate the most emotional dissonance. In different ways, they are the "grand finale".
​
They are also the ones that can draw you closer to Hashem than any of the others. They force you awake, and make you more alive than you ever thought you could be.
 
As ever,
Tziporah 

Dear Friends,

What a day Tisha B'Av was. It was moving, deep… and now... its vacation?
​
One of the difficulties that I have faced every year was moving from the mourning of Tisha B'Av to the vacation headset of bein hazmanim. It seems so superficial to break your fast and begin going through the vacation ‘lit’ that comes in the mail.  You can wait until the morning (since there is too much laundry to escape too far right after the 9 day hiatus from getting it done). But trying to develop amnesia just doesn't feel organic or right!

This year, I finally got it.

The progression of mourning begins on the 17th of Tammuz. The wall around Yerushalaim was breached, and the siege began in earnest. As things became more ominous the mourning increases until we face the day of Tisha B'Av itself.  The moment that the Bais HaMikdash was torched, leading to the death of 22,000 young kohaim who died and n others who were killed was at midday. That was the end. The end of hope that somehow there would be a last minute rescue. You would expect the mourning to reach its peak at that time of day. Instead, the laws of mourning begin to slowly recede. You can get up from the low stools that kept you on the floor all morning. You can begin moving back into ordinary life. The Talmud tells you why. "This is when Mashiach is born". Maharal explains that the profound recognition of who we became and what we lost is the key to moving forward. Now you can begin to say, "Okay. Now we are going to implement the changes that we have to face".

Quoting the Book of Daniel, Maharal also points out that the final phase of our exile will involve our facing two cultures. To understand why two (and who they are, and what we can do to deal with the conflicts that they generate) we have to talk a little bit about exile.

Exile, he tells us, isn't geographical. It has to do with losing track of who you are, and becoming something alien to your genuine self. He gives you a visualization to use as a way of getting in touch with what you are, and what exile from yourself really means.

Envision a black dot, with four arrows leading away from its core going in every one of the four directions. There are four types of "other". They can grab your essential sense of identity and lead you further and further away from your genuine sense of self.

Historically, one major detour we took as a people was falling under the spell of the Babylonians, who in their time were the most forceful "winners" in the world. Everyone likes a winner. Instinctively losing is associated with being dumb, weak and vulnerable, and winning with being strong, bright, and invincible. It was only when your ancestors came face to face with how brutal and inhuman this kind of ideology can be, that it was unveiled. A very similar sort of love/hate relationship with everything German in pre-war Europe was part of the social scene. They were "winners" and that was part of their evil magic. The other direction that takes you away from yourself, the intellectual parallel of physical force, was Greece. The Greeks created the human centered world. If an idea fit into this paradigm, it’s a "good" idea. If it doesn't, it's "bad". You are a "winner" just be virtue of excluding everything that doesn't ring true to (you guessed it) YOU! The only problem is that his is just one aspect of you. The spiritual aspect is kept under wraps. You wonder where the deeper and more genuinely moral You disappeared to.
 
These two forms of exile will not be the ones we face at the end. There are two other kinds of Other. The two major forces we face externally will be the combined forces of Persia/Arabic cultures against Western cultures. Go back to the dot on the white page. Look at the two arrows that go to the right and the left. Babylon was the arrow that pointed up (Babylon uber alles?), while Greece was the arrow that pointed downward (towards the moral abyss). Rome is the voice, the right, the stronger of your two hands. This is the voice that says, "I can do it. Build it. Market it. Invent it." It is the voice that says "yes". The left is the axis of Persia and the Arabs, who take pride in what they can conquer and destroy. It is the voice that says "no" to everything that isn't them. I am amazed how Maharal drew this from the verses in Daniel that once they are "opened up" are suddenly so clear. Hundreds of years before anyone could have envisioned today's international reality it was all there. What does that tell you? It says one thing.
​
Stay centered.

Don't fall into the illusion that you are what you can produce. Don't fall into the trap of careerism as a self-definition, or any other form of Yes that excludes real connection to Hashem, other people and your inner self. Don't fall into the trap of destruction; meaningless "politics" and divisiveness; inter familial nonsense, communal nonsense, anything in which you feel empowered by destroying your "enemies'.
Recognizing that you can stay in the center after you, experience the destruction of losing your inner sanctuary is what Tisha B'Av is about. Now you have to rebirth yourself! Be instructive, creative, and most of all honest about Who you are serving and what you are here for. Enjoy being you! Have a great bein hazmanim if this is when your vacation is going to be.

I will be BEH doing my usual trips to Tzfat, Yitzchar where my relatives have a house high enough to see the entire county! If that does not do it, what will?

As always,
Tziporah

Dear Friends,

What a day Tisha B'Av was. It was moving, deep… and now... its vacation?

One of the difficulties that I have faced every year was moving from the mourning of Tisha B'Av to the vacation headset of bein hazmanim. It seems so superficial to break your fast and begin going through the vacation ‘lit’ that comes in the mail.  You can wait until the morning (since there is too much laundry to escape too far right after the 9 day hiatus from getting it done). But trying to develop amnesia just doesn't feel organic or right!

This year, I finally got it. 

The progression of mourning begins on the 17th of Tammuz. The wall around Yerushalaim was breached, and the siege began in earnest. As things became more ominous the mourning increases until we face the day of Tisha B'Av itself.  The moment that the Bais HaMikdash was torched, leading to the death of 22,000 young kohaim who died and n others who were killed was at midday. That was the end. The end of hope that somehow there would be a last minute rescue. You would expect the mourning to reach its peak at that time of day. Instead, the laws of mourning begin to slowly recede. You can get up from the low stools that kept you on the floor all morning. You can begin moving back into ordinary life. The Talmud tells you why. "This is when Mashiach is born". Maharal explains that the profound recognition of who we became and what we lost is the key to moving forward. Now you can begin to say, "Okay. Now we are going to implement the changes that we have to face".
Quoting the Book of Daniel, Maharal also points out that the final phase of our exile will involve our facing two cultures. To understand why two (and who they are, and what we can do to deal with the conflicts that they generate) we have to talk a little bit about exile.

Exile, he tells us, isn't geographical. It has to do with losing track of who you are, and becoming something alien to your genuine self. He gives you a visualization to use as a way of getting in touch with what you are, and what exile from yourself really means. 

Envision a black dot, with four arrows leading away from its core going in every one of the four directions. There are four types of "other". They can grab your essential sense of identity and lead you further and further away from your genuine sense of self. 

Historically, one major detour we took as a people was falling under the spell of the Babylonians, who in their time were the most forceful "winners" in the world. Everyone likes a winner. Instinctively losing is associated with being dumb, weak and vulnerable, and winning with being strong, bright, and invincible. It was only when your ancestors came face to face with how brutal and inhuman this kind of ideology can be, that it was unveiled. A very similar sort of love/hate relationship with everything German in pre-war Europe was part of the social scene. They were "winners" and that was part of their evil magic. The other direction that takes you away from yourself, the intellectual parallel of physical force, was Greece. The Greeks created the human centered world. If an idea fit into this paradigm, it’s a "good" idea. If it doesn't, it's "bad". You are a "winner" just be virtue of excluding everything that doesn't ring true to (you guessed it) YOU! The only problem is that his is just one aspect of you. The spiritual aspect is kept under wraps. You wonder where the deeper and more genuinely moral You disappeared to. 
 
These two forms of exile will not be the ones we face at the end. There are two other kinds of Other. The two major forces we face externally will be the combined forces of Persia/Arabic cultures against Western cultures. Go back to the dot on the white page. Look at the two arrows that go to the right and the left. Babylon was the arrow that pointed up (Babylon uber alles?), while Greece was the arrow that pointed downward (towards the moral abyss). Rome is the voice, the right, the stronger of your two hands. This is the voice that says, "I can do it. Build it. Market it. Invent it." It is the voice that says "yes". The left is the axis of Persia and the Arabs, who take pride in what they can conquer and destroy. It is the voice that says "no" to everything that isn't them. I am amazed how Maharal drew this from the verses in Daniel that once they are "opened up" are suddenly so clear. Hundreds of years before anyone could have envisioned today's international reality it was all there. What does that tell you? It says one thing.

Stay centered.

Don't fall into the illusion that you are what you can produce. Don't fall into the trap of careerism as a self-definition, or any other form of Yes that excludes real connection to Hashem, other people and your inner self. Don't fall into the trap of destruction; meaningless "politics" and divisiveness; inter familial nonsense, communal nonsense, anything in which you feel empowered by destroying your "enemies'.
Recognizing that you can stay in the center after you, experience the destruction of losing your inner sanctuary is what Tisha B'Av is about. Now you have to rebirth yourself! Be instructive, creative, and most of all honest about Who you are serving and what you are here for. Enjoy being you! Have a great bein hazmanim if this is when your vacation is going to be.

I will be BEH doing my usual trips to Tzfat, Yitzchar where my relatives have a house high enough to see the entire county! If that does not do it, what will?

as ever,
Tziporah

Dear Friends,
Things here are quiet Baruch Hashem. How are things by you? 
​
There have been interesting things happening at Neve. Almost every day another group arrives. Some of them are here for a day or two, others for a week or more. They are from all over the world, and have only one thing in common with each other; they all want to know more and to experience more. They get as much as they can, but by the nature of things, they see Torah life from the outside. The inside has to be experienced.

Thinking about how limited their view of Yiddishkeit is, made me question how often and how well any of us look inward. With Tisha B'Av approaching, clearly reverting to the "couldn't be better mode" isn't the best modus operando. I recalled something that a friend told me.

My friend Faigy had the "pleasure" of coming on time to a wedding. This being Israel, hardly anyone besides the immediate family and the catering staff was there. The florist arrived. The flowers (at least in Faygy's opinion) were gorgeous. She said that they were a lively and somewhat violent tangerine. The tablecloths however were a delicate shade of pink with mint green trimming. Did you hear the yelling all the way to Montreal? From the way she described the scene, you should have. It took close to a half hour for the decibel level to go down to a high but bearable pitch. By then a small crowd had gathered, and were passive participants in the melee that started out with shocked hostility and soon disintegrated into painful verbal violence... The florist had no options. He couldn't get the amount of white roses needed. It was too late in the game. He offered to give whatever amount of flowers he could get free, and then moved on to offering financial compensation. The bride's mother's tone became more strident. The accusations came thick and heavy. He was a thief. He ruined the wedding. Her daughter would never forgive him for her humiliation on what should have been her happiest day. Then the curses began. “G-d is just: He will see that people hear about his. Your reputation is shot.  You’ll see - you’ll soon be out of business”. Downwards! “Your children will have miserable weddings if they marry at all”. And on. And on. Faigy stood silently and watched as the florist cowered and finally left in white-faced shame...

When she told me about it later, she said that she wished she had the courage to stop it. A quiet whisper to the bride's mom, maybe just one sentence or two would have restored sanity: " You can’t change the flowers. Enough! It is your daughter's wedding; let it go". Would it have worked? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing is certain, Faigy said," I couldn't possibly have made the situation worse." Faigy found it hard to forgive herself for not trying.

The similatrities between the Saga of the Orange Flowers and story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza were too close for comfort. In the Talmudic narration where the uninvited Bar Kamtza showed up at his enemy's party because the mail carrier (or second century equivalent) gave him an invitation meant for the host's friend. This led to a similar scene; some things don't change. The host demanded that he leave. The uninvited guest couldn't bear the humiliation and began to bargain. Bar Kamtza's rage at being thrown out (after he successively offered to pay for his potion, half the party and finally the entire party) wasn't directed only at his host. The sages of the time were there, and nobody intervened.
Would you?

I'm not sure I would have. We don’t know why the host hated Kamtza so much.  Suppose that the host's bad feelings weren't based on nothing. Suppose Kamtza had borrowed money from the host, defaulted and as a result, the host had to sell his home at a loss? If you were the host, would you want him at your party?  Would it matter how much money he was offering to be allowed to stay? Would it matter that he is your fellow Jew?  If you were one of the sages watching the entire drama, are you sure that you would intervene?

I recently saw an essay written by Rav Meilech Biderman. He posed the same question and came back with an answer that rang painfully true. You can't accept someone else's humiliation with a cavalier "gam zu litovah". It's wrong to do this to the victim and TAKE NOTICE! It’s just as wrong to let the perpetrator who is, after all, also your fellow Jew, to dig his hole deeper and deeper. Being Jewish means that you learn to care. Last week's Parshah spoke about the 42 stops that your ancestors made in their trek through the desert on their way to Eretz Yisrael. We are still on the same kind of journey, waiting for Moshiach to lead us to our final destination. The one thing that we know is what the end of the story will be; we are going to get there. The question to ask at this time of year is what you are doing to make it happen. We will be redeemed as a nation, a whole. The more you can rise above thinking of yourself as an island, the more you are creating the headset that makes this kind of redemption possible.

You have huge potentials, share it with others by being the kind of person that you want to be.
As ever,
Tziporah