Dear friends,
First the good news. I just got a really beautiful invitation to Lisa Panish’s daughter’s wedding. Some of you are ancient enough to know her as Lisa Zolat. For the rest of you, she is the one who has kept the Neve office in Manhattan running together with her staff since pre-history. I can’t help but wondering what percentage of you owe everything you eventually became because of her knack for making things happen.

There’s also bad news.
No one was untouched by the Shabbos in Pittsburgh. I am sure, people being human, that some of you initially asked yourself “Do I know anyone in Pittsburgh? Would they be at The Tree of Life? “You (and I to be honest) try to protect yourself with the knowledge that your inner circle is still whole.
Only it’s not.

To understand why not, without resorting to clichés, I want to do something very Jewish, which is to answer a question with a question. You ask (at least theoretically) how strangers in Pittsburgh can be part of your inner circle when you have never met them. Is this really honest? While you are in the asking mode, did you ever think about why women say the phrase thanking Hashem, “for the covenant you have sealed in my flesh” in birkat hamazon. It clearly alludes to circumcision. How can a woman thank Hashem for that?
The answer to all of the above can be understood when you focus on what happens when you take drink of water. Your lips were parched, and your throat was dry, but the drink that you took doesn’t just affect your lips or your mouth. Every part of your body is nurtured from your toe to your brain.
The same thing holds true for Klal Yisrael. No individual Jew can perform all of the mitzvot. If you are a man, you aren’t a woman. If you are a woman (as in the example with birkat hamazon), you aren’t a man. If you are a Kohen you aren’t a Levi, and if you are a regular Yisrael, or a Ger Tzedek you’re neither. It goes on. If you are in Eretz Yisrael you don’t keep two days of Yom Tov. If you are not in Eretz Yisrael, you don’t give any of the agricultural gifts (no trumah from your garden even in Lakewood!).  If you are living in this century you didn’t face the challenges your ancestors did thousands of years ago, but you draw on their merit. Meshech Chochma one of the great late 19th century sages brought a textual proof for this from the fact that at Mount Sinai the Jews all accepted all of the mitzvot. The lips, brain, toes, and all of the rest of the organs of the body of Klal Yisrael were there.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew, and yes, a murder is a murder is a murder. We are a family.
And even the best Jewish families sometimes fight.

One of the most difficult situations that arise is when you forget that. The reason for the toxic embitterment that poisons family relationship when you fight, is that you can’t forget that the person who hurt you is someone who is part of you and will be part of you forever.
You can get really angry with Hashem when you forget that you and He are one; to use Malbim’s words, He is the soul of the world. Walk with Him with simplicity.
What it means practically is you look at things and ask just one question. “What am I supposed to do. Who am I supposed to be”.
In this week’s Parshah, Chaye Sara, you have the very first psukim giving Sara the ultimate praise, her life is described by listing each stage. The conclusion is that each stage there was equally blessed. That’s not the same thing as saying each stage was equally easy; the years of her waiting couldn’t have been as joyous as the day that Yitzchak was born. The day that Hagar betrayed her couldn’t have been an easy one either. What each day had in common was that it was a day. Another day in doing what Hashem wants of you, and what you want of yourself. 

Eliezer was Avraham’s chief of staff. He lived to do whatever the mission that Avraham’s conscience dictated. If it meant teaching, he would teach, if it meant going out with Avraham to rescue Lot at the risk of his own life, he would go. When Avraham asked him to find a wife for Yitzchak, the fact that he had a daughter didn’t stop him from praying to Hashem for a sign. He wanted to find the kind of woman who would do what his own daughter would never be able to do, be a link in the chain.
Temimus is inner honesty about who you are, whether you are walking your talk, and whether you see yourself as part of something bigger than you will ever be.

In spite of the ten tests that Avraham faced, he never became disillusioned or resentful. His love for Hashem never was weakened by dealing with challenge after challenge. When Hashem decided to destroy Sodom and Amorah, he revealed this to Avraham. The reason is that (as the text tells us) he was , “Avraham who loves Me”.

The killings in Pittsburgh affect all of us. You can’t fight evil with cynical declarations or with bitterness. You have to open your heart to feeling pain.  At the same time, be real, open up your hearts to being more “there”, doing more good and being more tamim.

Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

There is an Indian legend about a man who inherited a sitar from his grandfather. He had to replace the strings, but he loved it because it was his grandfather’s. The bow gave out, and later the lower part of the instrument, cracked and had to be waxed on the inside. In the end, the entire lower part was replaced and reattached to the upper part. When the upper part cracked it too was first waxed and then replaced. Its owner still loved it because it was his grandfather’s sitar.

Sometimes you can end up replacing and recreating so many parts of you that you don’t know who you really are anymore. Would you be you if you had to leave your job or change careers? How about if you had to move to an entirely new country and begin again? Would you still be you? I think you would.
When you peel away all the external definitions, inside the self is still the familiar old you. Your soul is always there, and has always been there. There are ten names for the soul in Hebrew. One of them is kavod, which means honor or respect. Within you there is a piece of something greater than your interactions with other people or with the world. That part of you can be forgotten or buried under layers of self-criticism. I just heard form a woman who told me that she feels that no matter what she does, it isn’t perfect. Her Shabbos isn’t as joyous as she would like it to be. Her tefillah aren’t as focused, and her acts of kindness aren’t’ always completely sincere. She thinks her life is a failure, and doesn’t know how to escape from her feelings of self-loathing and despair. Her mistake isn’t so ridiculous s. You can easily confuse your soul with your deeds. Her soul, like yours and mine, is perfect. It ideally should find its self-expression be doing deeds that give it a voice. Even when this doesn’t happen, it is still perfect. Unexpressed and mute, but perfect.
When you see your inherent perfection, you don’t become a narcissist. You become aware of how beloved you are by Hashem, how fortunate you are to be in His world, and how much similarity you really have with every Jew you encounter.  Each one has a soul whose name is also “kavod”.

I just heard a story that can’t leave me. One of last generation’s famous “maggidim”, speakers on topics having to do with your spiritual journey, was R. Yankele Galinski. He was hilarious. His speeches were always heavily peppered with brilliant cuts at the human ego, especially his own. His son, Nachman, was taken ill with a condition that was potentially fatal. The doctors here had nothing to offer him, but told him that there are doctors in the States who have had good results with novel procedures that they recently initiated. The cost was overwhelming.  Two of his friends couldn’t just stand by and watch his almost daily disintegration, so they decided to do whatever they have to do to raise the funds that would make it possible for him to fly to the States for treatment. They flew to NY where one of their first stops was in a large well known suburban yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva received them cordially and asked how he could be of help. When he heard the story, he asked who it was who needed treatment. When they replied, “Nachman Galinski”, the Rosh Yeshiva said, “You can fly back to Israel. I am undertaking the entire funding”.  They were astounded.  “I’m going to call a general meeting of the entire yeshiva. Come into the main hall, and you’ll hear why I’m doing this.” The Bachurim didn’t know why they were called together on an ordinary day.  The Rosh Yeshiva told them the reason forNachman’s two friend’s journey, but then said, “Everything that I am, and everything I give you, comes from Nachman Galinski.”
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“ When I finished High School my Rosh Yeshiva influenced me to strive for more Torah than the Modern Orthodox yeshiva I had attended offered. “You could be a real talmid chacham” he told me. He told me about his own yeshiva days in Bnei Brak, and something inside me was ignited. I wanted to feel the energy of a real Beis Midrash, and see the leading scholars with my own eyes. I enrolled in the yeshiva that he had attended. It was at first a dreadful mistake. I had been learning Gemarrah four class periods a week, each period was three quarters of an hour. My bench mates had been learning Gemarrah all day since fourth grade. I had always been the top of my class. Here, it would be dishonest to say I was even on bottom. I was nowhere. I couldn’t follow the lectures, couldn’t hold a chevrusa, and couldn’t admit to myself that I had failed, and would do better in a yeshiva aimed at people with more limited backgrounds. One day there was a shiur klalli. I sat with my notebook open, doodled, folded the papers, tried to get even the most general idea of what was under discussion, but I was like Hansel but with no bread crumbs to follow the trail home. I took out a page, turned it into an airplane, and randomly threw it.  The wind caught it, and it hit the Rosh Yeshiva in the face. He did not look amused. I sensed that it wasn’t just about his kavod, it was about kavod hatorah, and there would be no negotiations. “Whoever threw this, please leave the room immediately”? I looked down, hoping against t hope that when he sees that no one is leaving, he would just go on with the shiur where he left off. It didn’t happen. He repeated his demand a second time and I instinctively knew that if he repeated it a third time he would leave the room and bedlam would break out. I still didn’t have the courage to get up. Nachman Galiski did. He rose; left the room took the blame and was expelled from the yeshiva. His father pleaded with the Rosh Yeshiva who readmitted him, but he couldn’t have known that the minute he got up. He saved my life.”

Nachman Galinski’s greatness flowed from his recognition that every person is significant enough that it is worth sacrificing what is most precious to save him. He didn’t know me. He didn’t see me here with you. Hashem may or may not give you the opportunity to save someone else’s life”.

But He gave you the opportunity to save
Yourself
Unique and ageless
Born from Divinity
Living eternally
Demanding its identity
Be known always.
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Love,
Tziporah                                           

Dear friends,

I will soon be heading out for Chaya Weisbard’s son’s bar mitzvah. “How nice”, many of you will be thinking, since you don’t know her. Except for those who do. She runs the women’s Heritage House where some of you began your journey to moving beyond whatever level of connection to Torah you had. Needless to say, her job requires that she be everything to everyone, a job that she pulls off with no only real skill, but with humility, which is so much harder. I just want to share something that typifies her so much. I called to ask what to buy her son-I told her that I was in a book store. I expected her to agree with whatever struck my eye at the moment, so I asked if he would like a sefer hachinuch. This is a great book for reference. It goes through all of the 613 mitzvos, tells you what they are, how to observe them, and what their spiritual root and purpose is. All this in easily readable language! Instead, she stayed on the phone (not long, maybe 3 minutes or so) and told me about her son, his intellectual curiosity and his love of topics that are interesting and different. I looked around, didn’t come up with anything so we went back to thinking in terms of a classic. Then a book of Q and A on contemporary issues written by a real erudite and witty rabbi, Rav Zilbershtein, came into view and that’s what I bought. What blew me away was the fact that she actually knew what her son would like, and that she trusted my sincerity enough to actually think about it instead of going for “Whatever you buy will be just perfect” or something along those lines. This is how she runs heritage house, and how she changes lives.

If any of you have anecdotes about her, or about Gila Manolson when she “served time” in the same role, I would love to share them with the rest of the crowd… Some of you may even recall Rabbi Meir Shuster who started the ball rolling. He was one of least charismatic men I have ever met (and yes, I have met some very non-charismatic individuals…). What made him so effective was that he broke through the “who cares” barrier. In fact, he was a one of a kind. No one comes close to his record in getting people to be real enough to walk through the door or go to a class. The reason that I use the phrase, “real” is that for so many of us, admitting that you don’t know much about your roots is one thing but being honest enough to say ignorance isn’t a great choice is an entirely different story. It was a curious mixture of persistence and absolute sincerity that did it.
Of course, the only reason that Chaya, Gila, R. Meir (or for that matter all of the kiruv front liners, Rabbi Refson, Jeff Seidel and tens of others, maybe even hundreds) are relevant is that the world is imperfect. The contrast between the creation narrative in last week’s Parshah and contemporary reality is so unbelievably stark, that words can’t do the job. Dr. Shlomo Kaphach is a doctor of internal medicine who has a deep interest in the inner workings of cells. ‘When you look at the systems in which each cell “lives”, the nervous system, the immunity system etc., no human mind can even grasp its complexity. His archetypical example is DNA. The “letters” in DNA (its components) are estimated at somewhere between 3 billion and 5.5 billion. If you were to take all 32 volumes of the encyclopedia you would have than a hundred million letters”. Nu. Quite a world He made, no?

Now compare this, to what you read about in the news. More and more painful evidence of how well we managed to take a perfect world and degrade it.

It’s not the story of failure, even though there are certainly enough negative thinkers out there who would disagree. It’s a world in which there is simultaneously the possibility of real victory by dealing with the world as a potential full place of challenge. You have to, to use my Rebbe Rav Freifeld’s words, “be the captain of your ship”. The phrase is actually taken from a Midrash on the words, “biZot yavo el hakodesh”, “This is how go to the Holy Place. In context the phrase is related to how to enter the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of he sanctuary in the desert, and later the Temple in Yerushalaim. There are several answers to “how do you get there”,- how do you become the kind of person who can enter a holy place. One answer is “be the captain of your ship”. What that means is that it is up to you to look at your “ship”, your body, your life situation, your resources, and decide the direction you want them to take. Sometimes that takes you to noticing that you can do far more than you ever planned to. When Rabbi Uri Lupolianski broke his leg, he temporarily required a pair of crutches. Six weeks later, he was more than happy to lay them to rest. The thought occurred to him; “I am not the only person in the world who buys medical equipment that will (hopefully) be used for just a short time. These items are costly, and are often discarded. What a waste!”. Decades later, his organization,” Yad Sarah” has branches all over the world (including Africa!). Yad Sarah purchases medical equipment, take a deposit so that the item returns to Yad Sarah after use, and gets passed on to others in need. It services thousands of people every year. You can also think small. You may not have much in the way of resources, but your power of speech belongs to you. Rav Freifeld told this story:

A woman came into his study. She was visibly broken-hearted. When she moved to her new home in Far Rockaway, she invited her best friend to come over. Her friend came in, looked around, and says, “Its nice but the rooms are so small”. The woman was devastated. What was her friend thinking? “When you speak you have to take responsibility” he said. The Gemorrah tells you that when someone shows you a new purchase, you should praise even if it’s a piece of junk. You’re supposed to make people feel good. It’s too late. They already bought it. At least make them feel good by finding something positive to say. In the story, the woman re into her apartment. She’s living there. Why tell her that her rooms are small. Where’s your sense of responsibility?

I’m also journeying through all of this. I will be in the States from Dec. 6-19. If you want me to come to your shul or your community or campus, let me know by email [email protected]
The real Tzadikim knew about taking responsiblity. Their speech no less than their deeds showed how much they took their lives seriously.

This is a new year! Make a new start, a happy one, in which you take your ship with Hashem’s help to the best and safest and most joyous places.
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Love,
Tziporah