​Dear friends,
I love Elul for the same reason that I like waking up in the morning.  

The life of a peasant ties him to the ground. One of the best things that happened to the Jews in exile is that we were never serfs. The Church saw us as cursed for rejecting their savior and therefore didn’t want us to “defile” the earth.  We never faced day after mind numbing day in the company of an ox or a donkey.  A peasant is a peasant from birth to death. He had no relationship to the nobility beyond whoever sat at the head of the table of the castle on the hill. We always had dreams that took us much further.

Spiritually we didn’t get off so easily. Not everyone was able to escape the fate of the peasants when you move into maintaining a vision of what life can be. Many of us can’t get beyond life behind the computer or the mind numbing process of making more and more money for less and less defined purpose. Some of us have never even met the ‘minor nobility”. What percentage of the Jews Out There has heard of the Choftetz Chaim, or Rav Shach? Did they ever hear of anyone like Rav Elyashiv or conceive of his level of dedication to Torah’s truth? Some of them may have come across Chabad, but how many of them understand the kind of love for every Jew that motivated their Rebbe? If the minor nobility is beyond their reach, how can their minds stretch enough to conceive of the Master of the Universe whose incomprehensible compassion creates every day’s sunrise? Intuitively every Jew believes that there is more to living than earning. This is why we are such meaning freaks.   

Hashem doesn’t change. In Elul you change. Not in ways that can be weighed and measured. There is something inside you that wants to wake up.  Shir HaShirim tells you, “I am asleep, but my heart is awake” describing what we feel in spite of  exile’s imprint. Your senses are dulled by the continuum of outside distraction that pulls you in every direction except inward and above. Your heart is still awake.

Elul is unique. The names of the months of the Jewish calendar are not of Torah origin. In the Torah they are numbered, not named. The numbers used are in reference to the exodus. Pesach takes place in “the first month”. When we talk in halachic language, we begin counting the months using the creation the beginning of the year. From that angle, Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the calendar takes place in Tishrei, the first month (which makes Elul the last month). When G-d speaks, nothing is more central that our evolution as His people. He counts time from the exodus.  

From our perspective, nothing is more important than acknowledging G-d as the ultimate Creator. This leaves us with a question: why did things change. We don’t speak about months by numbers any more. Why change? This question is especially striking when you realize that the names of the months are Aramaic, the language of our first exile. They mirror the depth of our slumber. The names also have a “heart” that is always awake. There are many meanings hidden in the spelling, gemmatria, and pronunciation of the seemingly random Aramaic names.  This tells you that even if you are asleep in exile deep in L.A. or N.Y. or wherever, your heart is still awake. Elul as most of you know stands for the phrase “Ani LIDodi V’Dodi li”. I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me.

He isn’t different. Your ability to be aware is different, and that opens your eyes to see that the King is with you, in the field or behind the computer. When you see the King in your field, things change. You discover that He was there all along. You discover that something of Him is in you. It’s the part of you that is most enduring, that isn’t constrained by the field or the computer or the paycheck or the latest style. It’s also the defining feature of everyone you meet.

Not everyone you come across is perfect. They are asleep. They may not be in touch with much beyond the field. When you feel the sweetness of being awake, it’s easier to forgive them for not seeing beyond the field. You still know how it was when you also were stuck with your eyes focused only on the ground in front of you.

A woman who I will call Naomi, called me up today with a difficult problem. Her neighbor, Lisa was able to get permission from the city authorities to enclose her porch. Naomi lives one floor below Lisa. This addition darkens her kitchen and shades part of her garden. Naomi appealed against the city’s committee and lost. That is the part of the story that she told me.  The raw fury that came through with every word was just as real as the narrative. Naomi described her neighbor as “aggressive”, “vulgar. “A bully” and more. I don’t know her neighbor. It might all be true. Naomi has no more legal options. The porch will be built. Her question is how she can face Lisa when the construction begins. She will see her in the building’s elevator. Their kids play together in the lobby. She doesn’t want to hate her (or more correctly she doesn’t want Lisa to see the extent of her hatred, because she is wise enough to know that that will only make things worse). We spoke for a long time. The conclusions that she reached were enormously empowering.

1-If she was meant to endure the unwanted construction; the One who determined that this would happen is the King Himself. It was decided last year. If her neighbor didn’t decide to enclose the porch, to quote the sages, “G-d had many bears and many lions”
2-Lisa thinks that she is right. From her perspective, she is protecting herself. If Naomi was less sure that she was right, the easier it would be to lower the temperature….Most people defend their rights.
3-She can’t choose what will happen. She can choose who she wants to be.
The result is that she decided to speak to Lisa, explain to her that she really thought that she was right; if she didn’t she never would have taken her to court. Now that the court decided against her, she will accept that there are two sides to this story. She will then wish her well.

The final step is doing all of the above with inner truth and genuine sincerity. This part of the story is still in progress.
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Have a wonderful Elul. It’s the best time of the year.
Love,
Tziporah

Dear Friends,

What a stretch.

The last letter that I sent you was over two weeks ago. By the nature of things, that means this letter will be shorter than it should be (even though logically it should be longer) because there is too much to write and too little time to actually get it all down.

The last time I wrote to you, I told you that I would share some of what I saw at the rally for Shmirat HaLashon, better communication. It was awesome. There were over 3, 000 women there. The only reason that they came was to make their lives better by changing both the way that they think and as a result, the way that they speak.  Each of the speakers touched upon a specific point. Amazingly, there was no repetition. The point that stayed with me the longest was made by the second speaker, Rav Nissan Kaplan. He is a distinguished Rav, who teaches at the Mirrer Yeshiva. He was frank in telling us that speaking at rallies isn’t really his scene, but that his mother had told him that if even one person changes the way she communicates, then it is worth the effort to adjust his schedule to make it possible for him to come. His point was the value of silence when under emotional stress. He told the story of a man, who I will call Shaul, who had been childless for many years. He had done whatever he could to change things, but the bottom line was that he and his wife still had silence to get up to in the morning, and silence to come home to at night.

​He asked  Rav Chaim Kanievsky for advice - he felt that he had tried everything. The Rav advised him to find someone who was humiliated publicly and didn’t respond in kind, and to ask that person for a brachah. “Where am I going to find someone like this?” Shaul wondered as he left Rav Chaim’s room. Hashem brought this person to him with His usual providence. Just a short time later, he was at a wedding schmoozing with a friend. Another man came by and said to a third person who was sitting at the table presumably downing a bureika, “So you think you can just come to a wedding and act like nothing happened? You ruined my apartment when you closed your porch. You owe me thousands” Shaul grasped the man’s forearm and whispered, “don’t answer!” The man, who is frum and has learned in yeshivas for years, knew that truth was on Shaul’s side. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t an emotional battle. He won for the moment and kept silent, but the other man continued...”SO you’re; being quiet. That means that even you know that you have nothing to say. Being quiet is the same as agreeing.” Another few moments of verbal abuse followed as a small crowd gathered. Soon they began to get back to the roast chicken and side dishes. After all, how much can you say when the other guy isn’t answering? “Give me a brachah”, Shaul pleaded. The man said, “Look, I’m not some kind of a Rebbe” Shaul persisted, and he finally said, “I hope Hashem gives you kids”. In less than a year Shaul’s first child was born.

The reason that this story is so significant is that it’s the kind of story that would have been enormously important even if Shaul wasn’t at the wedding. The spiritual force that this kind of forbearance releases is far greater than anything that can be described. If Shaul didn’t receive his brachah, the power of the deed would have still effected who knows how many people.

One of our problems is what I call, “retained infancy”. A baby sees everything in terms of himself. If I benefit, it’s worth making some effort. If the rest of humankind benefits, who cares? This attitude doesn’t always change when you get older.

The Talmud tells us that when witnesses testify, they must be told about how awesome a responsibility they have. They should give testimony with trepidation, with deep recognition of the significance of every word that they say. They are told “Be aware that as a consequence of false oaths Hashem can withhold rain, which leads to famine. Some people will say that even when there are seven years of famine, there are still some who will survive. They are then told that war can come from giving false testimony and they retreat into thinking that “no one dies before their time” It’s only when they are told that if they are discovered, they will be known as liars and  they will be disgraced. Then, something inside moves them...

You determine what kind of a world we live in. So do I. The headlines that make you think that power politics are where results come from are so illusory (not to mention the nonsense on the social media).
One of the reasons that we all find silence so hard is that it feels demeaning. How can you let someone get away with causing you pain?  Emotional pain is real. (Assume just for a moment that the victim in the story actually believed that he was right. How did he manage to keep his mouth closed when a crowd began to gather? How could you expect him to not give back just as much as he got?

The answer, Rabbi Kaplan concluded, is the recognition that suffering in and of itself changes you and is added to your merits. If you really trust in Hashem, you don’t answer evil with evil. You ask yourself different questions.

Maharal explains this idea by telling us that the core of most acts of personal failure stem from arrogance, and buying into the illusion of autonomy from G-d is the usual result of arrogance. If nothing else, when you suffer you face up to your own smallness, and your dependency on Hashem. Being silent and facing the music makes you humble, and can be seen as a gift from Hashem. Now let’s hear how you can change.
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New questions became part of your inner dialogue. You find yourself focused outward. “What does Hashem want of me this moment”? Maybe it’s to be humble. Maybe it’s to refrain from doing what I hate seeing other people do to me. When what you face is less dramatic than the story’s narrative, there are other questions to ask. “Why am I facing a person who I don’t feel much for? Maybe it’s to break down a barrier. Maybe it’s to make her feel acknowledged and more validated. Maybe it’s just to give the message, “You’re okay”. You can change lives that way, and draw down more brachah than you can possibly imagine.

When I left the auditorium, I couldn’t help but feel the positivity around me. Everyone wanted to make the ideals that we heard about happen.
Love,
Tziporah