Dear friends,

Are you normal? What does being normal mean? And most importantly, who cares?
You may be wondering why I am asking you this question. Don’t take it personally.

The reason that I think that this is worth thinking about is (believe it or not) the two extremes that you see in the Parshah in the way that Avraham and Lot related to the concept of giving.  Which way was normal?
The Parshah begins with telling you about The Next Day (or more accurately three days later). Don’t you wonder about The Next Day (or better still, the next year). What would it be like to revisit Cinderella 20 years later, when she is a bit heavy, uses significant amounts of face cream, and has done t'shuvah so that she can wear a sheitel? In a more serious vein, what would it be like to be Pinchas the week after his moment of choice and heroism? 
 
The Parsha takes you to Avraham sitting in front of his tent 3 days after his bris (when presumably the ancient world’s version of CNN would have already run of their story ‘Religious Fanatic Commits Act of Self-Mutilation in Chevron). They probably would hardly cover in the enormous changes in the world’s future atresult of the covenant. Ramban tells us that Avraham’s friend Mamre got it. He knew that from that day onward, he was no longer Avraham’s equal. He accepted the spiritual journey. This was very different from the transcendental religions in which the body and soul are perceived as being eternal enemies.
 
Now we find Avraham three days later, not surrounded by people. What was he doing? Looking outward, waiting to see if in spite of the extreme heat, he would find someone who needed a meal, a place to be, a bit of shade, and more than a bit of inspiration. If the word normal means. Normal, Avraham was not Normal. Merriam Webster’s definition of normal is conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern: characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine .
 
Lot had left Avraham and moved to Sodom. In fact, he was at that time the judge of Sodom, the Sodomer Rebbe if you will. What was Sodom like? It is described as a place of evil and sin.  When a person says “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is (also) mine”, Pirkei Avos says, “this is the trait of Sodom, but it also provides you with an alternative definition - saying, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours” You can see the problem with the first definition. It turns being a card-carrying member of Sodomian society into a thief, after other people's possessions,  the ultimate taker. The second description sounds more like down-home justice.  Certainly normal enough. In the Torah it is called evil and sinful, not just another version of normal.  

Initial Conclusion: Avraham was not normal. Lot was.
Final Conclusion: Being normal isn’t what life is about. Being the maximum person you can be, is.

One of the more interesting things about Avraham, is that the Torah doesn’t tell us what the steps were that led him to becoming the man that he was. The first time that his name is mentioned is to inform you of his birth, and the second time of having a prophetic experience in which he is told to leave everything familiar behind, and to go to wherever Hashem will show him. Ramban mentions that we don’t need to know the steps. You can see the finished product, step back and get something of a glimpse of what it would take to get there. Avraham had to break idols, face fire, and bring literally thousands of people to “learning” Hashem. The longest narrative that we have about him, however, is however today’s narrative, the one that tells you that at his age, on a hot day, in real physical discomfort, he was looking for opportunities to give hospitality to whomever he could find. For him, giving was life itself. He recognized Hashem from an early age as the host of the world, wanted a life in which connection to the Source was real, and became a giver. His “normal” was an exact opposite of Lot’s “normal”. 

Jews are not normal.

Our real heroes are the ones who give their lives, their time, their hearts, their resources. They aren’t the takers, the ones who “made it”, or the ones who “have it all”. There are many Jews who have succeeded in the “normal” world, and they are often fine people, but they are not our heroes because of their success, if they are heroes, it is because of what they gave. 

You have a body and a soul. Each one stakes a claim to your identity. The soul  loves to give, to contribute and to make a difference. It’s drawn to movement and life. The body loves to receive, to take in, to relax, and most of all to consume and to conquer. Neither one of them can live alone. They were created to live in harmony. In fact, the message of the bris is that this is what being Jewish is all about. You were created for having a broad inclusive identity. Some of us do it better than others. 

Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the previous Rosh Yeshiva of Mir, knew how to do it. He was one of the Great Abnormal Personalities of Our Time.

He loved giving. Each student was a favorite. He made program after program so that everyone who wants to learn Torah can find where he can find what he wants on the level that he needs, from the senior students with their breathtaking dazzling encyclopedic knowledge, to the ones who got their ears wet in the baal teshuva yeshivas, and were now ready for something more. He would break the ice by making ordinary conversation with people who were overawed. I once saw him at a bar-mitzvah. I was sitting on the other side of the mechitza, so I could hear the conversation between him and one of the regular Har Nofians. At that point of his life, he was seriously disabled by the Parkinson’s that he lived with for over a decade. For that reason, instead of approaching the buffet table, the host brought him an array of the selections. Our hero Har Nofian apparently wanted to keep the Rosh Yeshiva company, so sat down next to him. I caught a glimpse of the “Uh what do I say now” look on his face. So did the Rosh Yeshiva. After all, sharing a Dvar Torah form Torah Anytime didn’t seem all that appropriate when your audience is the head of the world’s largest yeshiva, and making small talk seemed even less appropriate. Rav Nosson Tzvi caught on immediately. He turned to the man and asked, “Do you think that Classic Coke really tastes any different than regular Coke?” The ice was broken, the man felt at home, and Avraham’s abnormal descendent was in his element.

Rav Finkel’s yahrzeit was this week along with Rachel Immenu’s. When I think of them, my desire to move beyond the taker oriented vocabulary of today’s world (boundaries, self-care, just be normal, etc.) becomes almost tangible. 

How about you?
​
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

Noach heard news that none of us ever heard (or ever will hear).
No one will survive.

He was literally speechless- no defense, no prayers for a miraculous change of mind, no apparent regret for what is and was the worst possible calamity that ever did or will happen.
Here you are, beginning your life anew after the holidays, and the first chapter you read in the Torah takes you to exactly the opposite of what you may have wanted to see. It’s not the Brave New World. What’s the message?

Noach is described as tzadik tamim, a tzadik who is `` whole''. Ramban comments that his trust in Hashem was absolute. Even before he heard about the flood, he didn’t turn to sorcery, fortune telling, or any of the ways of entering the foggy and spiritually escapist world of the occult that were so popular in his time. He recognized that wherever Hashem is taking him, that is where he has to be. He was not blind to the society in which he lived. He lived with corruption every day of his life. He saw the progression in which the most human of all traits, the traits that you love when you find them alive and well in yourself, inherent desire to give, and the will to make things more real, valid, and beautiful was eclipsed by most animalistic of all of your traits, the desire to endlessly take.

There was promiscuity, and by the nature of things all promiscuity is exploitive. There were all sorts of idols worshipped. What they had in common is that they demanded nothing in the way of higher moral consciousness. If you had to write the philosophy of the pre-mabul world in one word, the word would be “gimme”. The spiral downward had taken them to a point of no return.

Noach understood that the next step was one that only Hashem can determine. He accepted the decision with his characteristic wholeness. This acceptance wasn’t born of cruelty or of callousness. It was born of the hope for a new beginning.
Avraham took things differently when Hashem presented him with the decision to destroy Sdom. There too, there was no real possibility of change. Avraham, however, bargained. You could make a mistake, and think that he was outguessing Hashem. He wasn’t. He trusted Hashem so much that he is referred to as the “Head of all believers”. There was someone else he didn’t trust.
It was himself.
He knew that as a human, his role is to feel.
Not to judge.
He was right. There was a moment in which you can see that he knew the truth; Hashem’s will is just. He said (about himself), “I am dust and ashes”, meaning his human limitations blind him to genuinely grasping Hashem’s will, but the limitation is his, not Hashem’s.

In today’s society judging Hashem is fashionable. Admitting human limitation is not. There is enormous hidden greatness in being able to say, “I don’t know”, and mean it. It is even greater when your heart says what it says, but is silenced by its realisation of Hashem’s greatness.

You are moving into the Real World, and so am I. There are no holidays until Chanukah. Your ability to take all of the marvelous wondrous moments you had (maybe shofar. Maybe ne’ilah, maybe seeing the throngs head towards Birkat Cohanim, maybe just tasting the sweetness of the coming year, with its gift of renewal and life) and bring them to the ordinary somewhat (blessedly) uneventful moments. There may be moments that are dark, not given to your ability to look at them and see more than uninterpretable fog.

Great!
Those are your Noach moments.
And maybe even your Avraham moments.

Noach’s descendants fill the world. Every person you will ever encounter is here because somewhere way back there was one man worth saving. He was given instructions about how to build the ark that would be the means of his escape from the teaming waters of the flood. One of them was to build a Tzohar on its side. What exactly is a Tzohar? Rashi says it's either a window or a precious stone that sheds light. You can look outside and see destruction, or look inward and see light. Or both.

Love,
Tziporah ​