Dear friends,
I love Elul. The freshness, the hope, and most of all the sense of being able to negotiate the past and present are all so sweet.

The Ohr HaChaim lets you answer the doubts that tend to rise when you feel like you are treading water. You want to be more and do more, but sometimes you may feel defeated. 
Look at yourself hard enough to notice that there are three hurdles to deal with.  They are universal, and that tells you that you can deal with them, just as every other human can; we face the enemy, and find that he is us…and often times we win.

1-The yetzer hara (generally translated as the evil inclination) has to be understood. Everyone likes destruction. It’s empowering! It can be (ironically) so charged that you can confuse it with creativity. If you can get yourself back to your post toddler years you may remember how good it felt to knock down the leggo tower that you just built. It made you feel “in charge”, empowered, and strong. Here’s where things get complicated. You knew the good feeling of destruction even before you knew how good it is to give and to connect. The yetzer hara has been with you for years; he has a head start.

2-The problem of instant gratification can’t be overstated. Saying the wrong thing, but feeling the surge of “gotcha” happens in seconds. Impulsivity in every area of sensory pleasure is often the tool that the yetzer hara uses to get you to do what you would never do in a saner moment. 

3-Your sense of “normal” can change. The third time you make a bad choice and do something that you know very well is bad for you, t doesn’t overwhelm you with guilt the way it may have done the first time. 
After analyzing why things are so hard to change, Ohr HaChaim doesn’t leave you in the lurch. “It’s true”, he says, “If you and to fight this battle alone, with your strength as your only ally, you would recognize that you will lose. You just don’t have the strength to win this kind of war. However, the Torah tells you that even when actual soldiers went to war in earlier times, a specially appointed Kohein had to tell him, “Hashem’s is with you. His great strength will save you”

There are all sorts of ways in which you can do the equivalent of opening y our h and to receive Hashem’s help. Rav Meilech Biderman wrote,  Learn from a ship at sea.

It says in Yirmiyahu, “Who places a path in the sea”, Hashem makes it possible for you to navigate even when there are no signs to guide you. This the Arizal said, refers to Elul. Objectively there are no paths in the sea. There is no set route so you have to chart your own path. There are some basic rules you have to know, (such as how to use a compass), but for the most part he is on his own. 

Everyone has his own path, his own purpose in being here, and his own destination. Everyone has to discover their own path of tshuvah. You find your way based on examining your talents, your tests, and the role that Hashem gave you in life. Each one of these three things ultimately are gifts, presented to you so you can become the person you want to become. 
​
When you examine yourself honestly, it’s time to go on to the next step. You open your hand and to receive the help Hashem has ready to extend to you from the moment you were created.

Your path. Your destiny.
Your set of wings
That take you higher
Into a place that you
Never never never
Wanted to go
Until you were there.
Love, 
Tziporah    

Dear friends,
​
Can you really choose life? Isn’t being alive or not out of your hands?
The fact that the Torah tells you to choose life means that you can look and see that Hashem put before your life and death, blessing and curse, and then tells you:

Choose life!

The Torah would never tell you to do something that you can’t’ do no matter how you try. It’s the Torah of life! Not a collection of dry principles that are inapplicable to ordinary people and apply exclusively to the Very Righteous. 

What actually is involved in choosing life? Before going further, it’s important that you and I are on the same page when we talk about what the word life actually means. The dictionary begins its definition of life by offering two options. One is “The quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body. The principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings …The second it “the Sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual.” On the surface of things neither definition lends itself to being available to you as a choice. The qualities that make you at least “not dead”, are not qualities that your efforts or money can acquire. You also can’t choose your experiences.   

That’s only when you decide to stay on the surface. There is more out there than surface experience. Where does the “principle or force” actually originate? Did it make itself?  Sfas Emmes would say that Hashem vivifies everything you will ever see or experience. There is what he calls “an internal point” of connection between any dimension of reality and Hashem Himself. It is He who generates innumerable forces to “make up the physical and mental experiences” that make up your existence. He is both the source of life, and the orchestra leader who composes its unending symphony. You can choose to uncover the concealed source of life as you live ordinary life, working, eating, interacting with others and making the daily choices that face you, or you can choose to live on the surface. One problem in choosing to live on the surface is that the physical world is death bound. Did you ever look around at all of your Stuff-you know the Stuff you buy, store, use, enjoy? Did you notice that it is headed towards oblivion? I don’t think in those terms very often, but every so often I let myself take it in. There is a choice I can make that changes the picture. If I choose to find the spark of eternity in all that Stuff, by letting it take me (and it!) to its root, then it never really dies.

My kids are good kids, Baruch Hashem (for sure it is His grace, not my somewhat shall we say, ‘A’ for effort parenting). Two of them decided (without being asked!) that it would be nice to offer my husband and I an escape from the covid generated isolation we have been in long enough to contract a bit of cabin fever. Sky, earth and variation becomes precious when you don’t have enough of it for a while.  Child number 1 decided that he could figure out a tiyul that have the magic word, OUTSIDE and at the same time bring us to places where we could maintain isolation. He took us on a trip to Maarat Hamachpeila late morning when there were no organized prayers going on, and from there to the tomb of Ruth and Yishai, and onwards to mountain spring in Bat Ayin, off again to a fenced off beach in Ashkelon and finally to the tomb of the prophet Samuel. Yes. All in one day. By the time we got home we were totaled, and didn’t want to go anywhere else for the next century or so. However, three days later we were once more Ready to Go, and another child did the organizing. This time we were off to Shiloh, the site of the ancient mishkan (sanctuary). We saw the place where it once was. I looked around me, and realized that the stones and the earth are still alive with the same force that was there when the Jews first laid eyes on its thousands of years ago. The same is true of all of the places we saw and all of the land that we tread upon, the spring at Bat Ayin and the waves hitting the sand on Ashkelon’s lonely shore. And here in Yerushalaim, and back where you are. In the States or anywhere on the globe. There is life force to discover. Always. You can reframe your life to learn to feel it.

 “There she goes. Who says I want to reframe my life?” Listen to the reframes, and take in that they may be what you need to choose life. There are seven in Orchot Tzadikim, but we will just  look at two of them this time around.’

1 - Realize that Hashem has compassion for every human being. He has more compassion for you, than you will ever have for yourself   Compassion isn’t’ pity - it’s closer to love than to patronizing solicitousness (how’s that for a big word no one ever uses? Isn’t playing scrabble worth-while?)  You may think at times, that you are the only one who knows your feelings and what your heart tells you. You aren’t. Hashem sees what you and I see, the surface of reality. He also sees far more than that. He sees your inner life more clearly than you do, knows your fears and pain without the defenses that you put up. You may at this point say, “Where I am today has nothing to do with Hashem. I killed so many relationships dead, I let my ego trap me so many times.  This may be true.

That doesn’t mean that Hashem won’t re-open doors that you closed. As long as you are physically alive (which you usual can tell…) the message is that Hashem believes that you have a reason to be here, that your inner capacity for living a genuine, meaningful, contributive, joyous life are all still in the picture.
2 - All of the benefit that you have ever reaped from any other human comes through them (for which they deserve acknowledgment validation and thanks) but from Hashem. No one can give you what they don’t have; whatever you received from your parents, mentors, friends, spouses are real. They made the choice to care. Nonetheless, all they can give is what they have, and everything they have comes from Hashem, whose love for you is ultimately the source of their love. Knowing this and living this is what choosing life is about. 

So much for now!
​
Well, stay alive till next time…
Love,
Tziporah  

Dear friends,

I begin this letter with mixed feelings. On one hand, I am not sure how much to share with you, and on the other hand, I like you far too much to keep much back. 

I received a wedding gift today, one that put any other gift we received in the shade.
It is a check for $9. It was sent from a man who began corresponding with me years ago. He reads Hamodia, and likes the Torah articles. He had a question and a comment on an article I wrote, and we have been corresponding since. He is a prisoner in a federal facility. 

In the course of the time he has been incarcerated he has developed himself spiritually in ways that we can all envy (or at least admire). Keeping kosher, studying Torah and most of all not being destroyed by an environment that tells you hundreds of times a day that you are unworthy in every possible way, is a great feat. Many people have been reduced to emotional and spiritual pulp in situations that are far less overwhelmingly negative. On one of my trips to the States, I travelled out to his “home” a medium security jail, together with another woman. Our aim was to meet him, and give him something small. In order to arrange our visit, we registered, arrived at the right time, and then sat through an indeterminant amount of time while all of the prisoners were counted before they could enter the large public room where visitations take place. The vast majority of visitors were women whose faces told me that they are mothers and wives. In the short time we spent with him, we got a feel for what it means to never have warm food, because if it koshers it’s cold. Never turning your back on your”friends”. There were some rays of light in the darkness. One was having visits from an unbelievable group of frum men who come out on a regular basis to learn with and to bring chizuk to someone who was once just a stranger to them. I didn’t notice any others. 

The $9 is more than he earns in a week doing the kind of work available in the lock-up. It means real sacrifice of small things that help make life bearable. 

I made a decision on the outset not to ask questions about his pre-prison life. It would be intrusive, and in a certain sense voyeuristic. In the note he sent with the check, he expressed regret that he couldn’t attend my wedding personally. “I won’t be here forever” he wrote. I hope the day will come when my husband and I can have him over for a Shabbos in our home.

Why was I reluctant to write this? I like to write about either the parshah, or what is going on in your lives or in mine. His story is not one that will resonate to you, at least not on the surface. You don’t live his life, nor do you know what getting up in his cell feels like. When I thought about it more, I changed my mind. It occurred to me that in some regards we are all imprisoned. Some of us have addictive behaviors, others are locked into families that are so hard to navigate that your love for them and your belief in yourself can barely coexist. Almost all of us are locked into self imposed traps where the person you want to be and the person you are barely on speaking terms. The good news, is that you can be like my acquaintance, Mr. G., who is free in the deepest sense of the word. His trick (from the outside) is that he has realistic aspirations and knows what steps he can take to make them actually happen.

The reason that I decided to write it anyway isn’t just because of the message of dignity and hope that came with the $9. It’s because it is actually related to one of this week’s Parshah’s most moving questions; What does Hashem want of you? You may have tied yourself down to one of the answers that work for most people . He wants you to do all the mitzvos. But not only that . You have to get your kids into the best schools. Make a great shidduch. See that the couple can get by in the beginning at least. You want to marry (or stay married), raise perfect kids (have you met one lately?), have a rewarding career (In every sense of the word rewarding). The proof that these are popular goals is that this is where the majority of people invest not only their time, but their hearts and souls. The Torah tells you that all that Hashem wants of you is to fear Him. 

Fearing Hashem isn’t the same thing as dreading punishment. That has nothing to do with Hashem; it’s about fear of suffering.  Your first step in learning fear of Hashem means taking in some of the wonder and enormity of His creativity and power. The next step is to envision yourself working in the perfect job, one that you have dreamed of forever. Your employer is brilliant, generous, and has told you that your work is more than good-it’s great. If you were given an assignment you would relate to it seriously. If you see the deadline approaching, you might begin to feel some anxiety. Is it because you think that the boss will slap you? Hit you? Hold a staff meeting in order to humiliate you? Of course not. Your anxiety is born fear of losing his respect, admiration, and possibly your position. Along the same lines, realize that Hashem has given you an assignment that only you can do. You don’t want to lose the bone that you are building as you do this assignment. 

The sages play on the word mah, which means “What”? They point out that it is very similar to the word “meah” which means a hundred. “What does Hashem want of you? “ they ask enigmatically, “To say 100 blessings a day”, which plays out by your seeing everything that you eat, see, touch or experience has being a gift from Hashem, for which you can/should bless Him.  This means that you are on assignment, your job is to find Hashem in the world regardless of your situation, and to become His servant. Mr. G. is on assignment. 

He is on assignment. He has no complaints to The Boss. He does his job as best he can. 
So are you
And I
On assignment with the knowledge
Of the dazzling
Brilliant 
Beloved
Place that your heart becomes as you go on one step
At a time.
​
Love,
Tziporah