Dear friends,

For the first time in the history of these letters, I am quoting a Non-Jewish source. You may be very reasonably wondering why I feel that you are interested in what the Boston Globe has to say about the creation of humans, (not that Jeff Jacoby has that in his lexicon).

Bear with me! HERE GOES

​“According to the United Nations, the world’s human population will reach the nice round number of 8,000,000,000. In its latest annual report, the UN Population Division pegs Nov. 15 as the date that milestone will be achieved, but that’s just a guesstimate. No one knows precisely when or where Baby 8 Billion will make her appearance. However, we can be sure that she will be welcomed by her family the way most newborns are welcomed: with happiness.
 
It should make all of us happy that the human club is about to welcome its 8 billionth living member. UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls it “an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and reduced maternal and child mortality rates.”
 
He’s right, of course. Yet to many modern, educated elites, the enlargement of the human race is cause for despair and angst, not joy. In sophisticated circles, childlessness is promoted as virtuous — even stylish”
 
ARE YOU GLAD TO BE HERE? 
 
The very first blessing that G-d gave the crown of all creation, human beings, is “Be fruitful and multiply…fill the earth…You are blessed. Your children are blessed... Having them is a blessing. Hmmm.
 
The word brachah is rooted in the letters beit (which has the value of 2) reish (200) and chaff (20). Each one of these numbers is the first “more” in its number unit. A blessing means becoming more. More is not the same as different. Hashem blessed the animals that they multiply, but in a basic sense, they remain what they are (i.e., you can’t bless a lizard to become a snowflake – it can only be whatever a maxed-out lizard is). If you want to see yourself as blessed, it means being the maximum person you could be. Not being someone else. 
 
When the animals were blessed with the possibility of reproduction, they were not given the power to do more than maintaining their species. They were and are instinctively aware of the reason for their centrality, and their reason for being in the Garden of Eden – the place where physical and spiritual reality at that point were not really separate. Some of you are familiar with the Nature Song (Pirkei Shirah). The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni 889) tells us that when Dovid Hamelech concluded the compilation of Tehillim, a frog appeared before him and told him, “I say more songs and praises than you do. Not only that, but three thousand parables are said about every song that I recite…. Not only that, but I am involved in a great mitzvah, and this is the mitzvah that I involve myself with: There’s a creature on the shore whose sustenance comes exclusively from [creatures that live] in the water, and when it’s hungry, it takes me and eats me.”
 
In Perek Shirah, the songs of many creatures are quoted. The “song” of the frog is also there.  It’s Baruch shem kvod malchuso l’olam va’ed — “Blessed is the Name of His glorious kingdom for all eternity.”
 
The difference between any two lizards or frogs is not comparable to the difference between any two people. Human potential for individuation is one of Hashem’s great miracles. The Talmud tells you, “How great the King who mints innumerable coins and every one is different.
Humans have unique abilities and a unique purpose. We are able to dominate nature, but our purpose is not dominion as an end goal. It is “l’ovda vilshomra,” to serve and to guard. This goes far beyond survival. One facet is serving Hashem through the positive mitzvos. What that means is using the directives that He gave you to bring about His plan for you in ways that you and only you can do. If you are a kohen, you aren't a Yisrael. If you are a man, you aren’t a woman. If you are financially stable, you have obligations towards charity that are different from those of someone who is struggling financially. If you are overwhelmed by many responsibilities, you are living a different life than someone who is struggling with loneliness. There are mitzvos that were given to everyone, but the way you will observe them is distinctly your own. Honoring your parents may present possible challenges that someone with an easy set of parents will never have. The list goes on and on. Your blessing is being yourself. Of course, some positive mitzvos can and should be done by everyone – they transcend the aspects of your life that are exclusively yours. An example would be having emunah. Everyone can seek Hashem. Others are distinctly your own. Humans are also commended to guard themselves, the world they live in, and more through observing the negative commandments. You may not destroy yourself by speaking lashon hara or upset the balance that Hashem generated by stealing.
 
YOU ARE BORN TO SUCCEED. AND WHEN YOU DON’T, YOU ARE HERE TO SUCCEED BY RETURNING TO YOUR BEGINNING POINT.
 
Sforno points out that the literal words are “work her” and “guard her”. The “her” in question is the neshamah.
 
The key to your unlocking the door to your own purpose is getting to have sensitivity to your soul’s capacities, and giving them the freedom to flow. This happens when you find your place of spiritual excellence and give it an address. For Henny Machlis it was bringing people into her home. Some of you have heard of her; others have had a Shabbos meal along with the hundred or so other people she hosted week after week. Hachnasat Orchim (hospitality) is a mitzvah for anyone. If you were to have her love of people that would be the natural address for it to flow. I was a friend; we confided in each other. Things were not always easy, but things were always good.
 
Identifying your challenges is the other track. That means guarding your soul by protecting yourself from letting negative “gravity” pull you down to become what you don’t want to be. Self-esteem comes from credibly saying to yourself, “I can be whoever I want to be.” I can resist the pull towards doing whatever people do to get others to say, “Amen. You’re okay," when I don’t believe in their goals. The range here is huge. Some of you are tempted to throw in the towel and just be “normal”. Others of you are tempted to let the strong emotions you feel draw you down towards saying things that can’t be erased. Others are tempted to look away from other people and let their own egos and desires take up the entire stage. 
Hashem didn’t create you or any other human just to maintain the species. The world can’t continue without earthworms (they make tunnels that bring oxygen into the soil). It can do very well without humans. It would be greener…nicer…
 
YOU ARE BORN TO BE A LEADER AND A FOLLOWER.
 
As Jews, we are called a holy nation and a nation of kohanim. We aren’t all literal kohanim. Rashi explains that the word means sarrim, officers or leaders. Ramban says that it means “servants of Hashem”. Sforno speaks about being part of an eternal people. There are no contradictions here. You were created to be yourself and to bring what only you can into the world. You are an officer, a leader. When you look at history you will see that any form of morality that exists came to the world through the Torah (Christianity and Islam drew their moral teachings secondhand from us). This doesn’t mean that they necessarily did or should learn Torah. It means that the moral example of living on the Torah’s terms makes you a leader. The more you serve (Hashem) the more you lead.
 
ENJOY THE WORLD THAT HASHEM RECREATES FOR YOU EVERY DAY!!!
 
Love, 
Tziporah

Dear friends,
 
I just came back from Pachad Yitzchak. Some of you know to what I am referring – the yeshiva near the entrance to Har Nof with the winged roof. It is the Israeli branch of the more well know American yeshiva, Chaim Berlin.
 
I arrived at the women’s balcony-section of the Bais Midrash at about 6:20. The official title of the gathering was “neilas ha’chag” closing the holiday Shemini Atzeret-Simchas Torah (which in Israel take place on one day) the completion of the days of wonder and awe, the season that began back in Elul. There were several hundred young (well, mostly young) men and about 25 or so women in the balcony, and a few kids. The Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yonason David, whose age is estimated as a bit over 90, sat at the head of a large table that extended from one end of the Beit Midrash to the other and held the audience absolutely spellbound for about two hours. He dotted his discourse with niggunim which were as much part of what was happening as the words themselves. I want to share some of what I heard (but with very limited responsibility for its being precise, and with my own examples).
 
He began by speaking about the famous statement, “A mitzvah is rewarded according to the suffering,” a phrase that is usually understood as meaning that the suffering you may have endured in order to observe the mitzvah is added to the reward for the mitzvah itself. (For instance, a seminary girl with very limited funds who buys a beautiful new sweater for a friend who is on the edge of depression has done a deed of much greater meaning (and greater reward) than if someone with unlimited spending allowed on Dad’s card made the same purchase.) The Rosh Yeshiva took a novel approach to the way we relate to mitzvahs. “There must be genuine simchah, delight, and spiritual pleasure when doing a mitzvah. Even refraining from sinning is a reason for joy, and that is true even in the case of refraining from harming another person! The joy itself in your desire to do Hashem’s will, regardless of what it takes, gives your soul the highest pleasure it can ever experience (although you may not feel it consciously). If you are willing to pay a price for a mitzvah (for instance not feeling “in” when a circle of friends want to hear the “real story” especially when it was juicy) you will receive far greater pleasure both in this world in terms of who you become both at the moment and later, and beyond this world. The more spiritually self-aware you are, the more willing you will be to pay a price, and to do so joyfully. (Imagine purchasing a million-dollar apartment in Har Nof for $25,000.) When you do something worthy and great, you can sometimes feel this happening. There is more to the story. Even when you refrain from something that is spiritually degrading, you are peeling away the external and limited part of who you are. The same way that the menorah in the Bais HaMikdash had to be made of one piece of gold, not many pieces molded together, bringing all of the aspects of your personality together in reaching higher and rejecting what holds you down lets you shed light. (An example could be the way you feel when you recognize that the feeling of becoming part of a group by using lashon hara as your social glue is illusory. You peel off the illusion, so that it is no longer part of your inner dialogue.)
 
Tell me the truth. Was that sentence really too long? My computer is telling me to revise it for length. Would my human friends have done that? No, they are far too tactful…
 
Learning Torah is compared to a continuously flowing spring that endlessly fills a pond. And then another pond. And another. It provides you with endless possibilities of becoming closer by changing the way you think and feel so that there is a continual connection to Hashem, the source of all truth and goodness.
 
 
What made this experience even more meaningful was that I spent the morning and the previous night in the Boston shul in Har Nof. What I saw there was the Rebbe dancing with such bliss that everything that I heard later was happening before my eyes. His booming tenor carried the men into a different realm. Here was none of the self-consciousness (or perhaps more correctly and generously self-awareness’) that sometimes occurs with group dancing. No one was watching other people’s responses to their dancing or doing anything that even remotely resembled putting on a bit of a show for the crowd. They were absorbed by the experience. I couldn’t have put what I was observing into words. Hours later, Rav Yonosnan David gave me the words to express what I felt earlier: "When the heart and the mind meet as they move higher and are aflame, there is only simchah.”
 
Have a great rest of the journey,
 
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,


How much time will you get to sit in the succah this year? For many of you, the answer is “not too much.” If you are living in a place where building your own succah is just not going to happen, then you may be in what I’ll call category 1.
If you could build one, but it’s so small that you leave it to the men in your life, I will call you a person who is in category 2.
If you have a spacious succah and have learned enough about it for it to be the place you want to be, but you have to work on Chol HaMoed or lose your job, you fall into category 3. Category 4: for safety reasons, climate reasons, or membership of a community in which sleeping in the succah isn’t done, the only time left is when it is neither day nor night. Does that mean that Succos is a shadow of a holiday?
 
HAVE NO FEAR SUCCOS IS STILL HERE!


Whether or not you are able to be in the succah physically as much as you would like, these days are days in which you are surrounded by what the Kabbalists call the “makifin” the surrounding light. In general, we live within the frame of what they would call Ohr Pnimi, inner light. What that means is that Hashem is in constant response to your striving, your yearning, and your doing. This is what is meant when it says in Tehillim, “Hashem is the shadow of your right hand”. The same way a shadow follows the movement of the hand, Hashem echoes your movement towards Him. Ohr Makif tells you that there are times that He is with you wherever you are, whatever you do; He is like your succah, the visible one or the invisible one. The word succah is 91 in gematria. This number equals the gematria of Hashem’s four-letter sacred Name, YKVK, and the Name that we pronounce when praying, ADNY. This tells you that Hashem who is transcendent and unknowable (YKVK, which we don’t say – it expresses a dimension of reality that is far beyond us) is also there. His light is in every aspect of reality, and especially on Succos, He lets you see that He is there in what tragically some people call the “real world” even if you don’t let Him in.
 
ALL OF YOU? WHAT ABOUT THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE ISSUES WITH THE CREATOR?


We take the esrog, which represents the heart, the lulav which represents the spine, the hadasim which represent the eyes, and the aravos which represent the lips, and draw them all close. The heart, the Gra tells us, is the captain of the ship. All of the otherness that this world can lead you to can easily overwhelm the spark of wisdom hidden in your heart. It’s still there. The spine carries the messages of the brain to the rest of the body and generates unity between what you think and feel, and what you actually do. You then can interpret what your eyes tell you. In the end, who you really are will be expressed by your words. Real simcha comes when the different parts of you are all working together. When you let yourself feel surrounded by Hashem, it’s a lot easier.
 
A HARD MITZVAH?


Rambam writes that “There is a mitzvah to be happy on all of the holidays, but is especially important on Succos as it says, ‘Rejoice before Hashem your G-d seven days.'" If you find it hard, daven for simcha! It isn’t mission impossible. A man came to Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. He was deep in depression about the hard realities he faced. Rav Shlomo Zalman said that he knows a man who also suffers, but is still always happy. “The man had surgery that left him deaf in one ear. He is a widower with all that entails, and three of his grown children are married but never had children of their own. He is genuinely happy and always has a smile on his face.”
The man answered, “I don’t believe what you’re saying. Do you actually know him?” Reb Shlomo Zalman replied, “I know him well. In fact, I’m talking about myself.”
 
His esrog, lulav, hadasim, and aravos were together, focused, and full of emunah.
 
Have a great Succos!!

​Love,
Tziporah  

Dear friends,

It’s here!!!!!

Yom Kippur is the best day of the year; it cleanses and leaves you with the potential to be the person you always wanted to be.

Rambam tells you that the Torah commandment of Tshuvah is confession to Hashem, which by its nature includes both regret for past wrongs and commitment to change. You can mistakenly think that it should sound something like this:

“I am a failure. The proof of who I am is what I do. After all, who did all this awful stuff, Oscar? Harry? No! it was me!” Followed by, “This is boring. I already said this. I said it several times this Yom Kippur, and that is without even remembering what I said last year. Promises made and forgotten. Why revisit the scene of the failure? It’s not going to happen. Okay. I’ll say it. It’s printed in the machzor. I don’t need more guilt. Here goes, “Ashamnu.” I was guilty. “Bagadnu” I was a traitor….” 

Version 2

“You Hashem know me better than I know myself. You breathed something of You into me, and You made me live with my desires, my ravenous ego, and my impulsivity. You didn’t make a mistake when you made me with inborn love of everything that You hate. You made Tshuvah before You brought existence, as we know it, into being. You aren’t shocked by what we can become. You know that moral growth includes doing battle, and that returning is even nobler than never stumbling. The wise men I haven’t met put it into words. “Ashamnu” We (No! Not just me. All of us.) have been made desolate. What could have been full is empty. I will fill it! “Bagadnu” We were traitors. You give us so much! Just listen to what the anti-Semites say. “They dominate the world. They take over everything they touch.” Isn’t that how You made us? I want to use the desire to lead for the good. The desire to own to elevate the world that You gave us with Your signature intricacy and order. I will use what You poured into me for the good.
 
Version 3

“I know I can’t change on my own. The yetzer hara is an angel, and I am only a human. I implore you to help me. I know that You want to. I have no desire to return to the place of no return. The place where I was when I made blockages and walls when what I want more than anything is connection.

WHY FIVE TIMES?

Picture a domino five, One white dot in every corner of the black surface, and another white dot in the center. Each of the four dots is disconnected from any other dot. They are, however, equally close to the center dot.

FOUR COMPONENTS

The physical world is made from four basic compounds. Fire, water, earth and air. Each of them has a spiritual parallel, one that (like the physical compound) can be used for good or for the opposite.

Fire – passion, the energy you need to love, to be fully alive, to be dedicated. It rises by its nature to its source the way the soul by its nature reaches out to Hashem
Fire – the destructive passion that leads you to saying what you should never say, doing what you should never do, destroying what you love as easily as you destroy what you hate
 
Water – the flow from above to below that brings its nurture to everything that l lives
Water – the flow of nurture that you can easily turn inward and redefine nurture as self-indulgent treat after treat living in which there is neither real purpose nor even real pleasure
 
Earth – the resilient source of growth. Everyone steps on it, but it endures. Humble caring and always there
Earth – the passive unambitious voice of depression laziness and often a silent but hidden brand of despair
 
Air – the stuff that takes you above the earth, brings you to spiritual consciousness and makes you feel alive
Air – the escapist fantasy that tells you nothing matters
 
TURN FOUR INTO FIVE (HUH?)
You are a composite of all of the compounds. Whether they take you to version, one or version two is where free choice lives. The only real choice is whether you turn your nature towards Hashem, His will and His plan for you, or let it take on its own life, leading you further and further away.
If you can make time to read the confession today, and ask yourself what they say about the direction you may have chosen in the past, you may find yourself wanting a new direction. Telling Hashem that you want to redefine yourself (not recreate yourself – essentially the elements that make you yourself are where your highest potential lives), He will not only accept your Tshuvah, but He will help you to move beyond your present moment systematically.
 
You know the people who have done it. The famous baalei Tshuvah who used their talents and abilities in a new direction. The non-famous baalie Tshuvah who turned ambition into kiruv, passion into tefillah, materialism into generous hospitality and more.
 
Have a gmar chatima tovah and enjoy every moment on the road.

​Love,
Tziporah