Dear friends,

Yaakov’s life was never easy. His childhood was marred by his unrelenting need to deal with his brother Eisov. Eisov lived to control, to own, and to use. His favorite tool was duplicity. And he was his father’s favorite.

Yitzchak was dedicated to turning Eisov, his oldest son, into something he would never be – someone who lived for Hashem, not for himself alone. The basic rule that touches every aspect of every relationship is, “The more you give, the more you love.” Yitzchak loved Eisov because he gave him so much time, heart, and everything a father could give. He would hear Eisov’s spin on halachah and think that at least some progress is being made. He would see his efforts at honoring his father as an opening to genuine spiritual movement.
How would you feel if you were Yaakov?

We don’t know how Yaakov felt. We do know that he couldn’t have been at ease with a step he had to take later on, he must have felt enormous pain in misrepresenting himself to Yitzchak by presenting himself as Eisov to prevent Eisov from receiving the blessings that would be his tool in destroying everything that Avraham and Yitzchak had built. It was necessary, and his disguising himself was closer to the truth (in his being far more able to be the next link in line of avos) than letting Yitzchak think that Eisov was really in the running for being a spiritual leader.

How would you feel about this need to twist things if living with truth was the core of your personality?

WHAT’S TRUTH ANYWAY?

This week’s parshah begins with telling you what happened on the first leg of his journey. Yaakov stopped to sleep, put 12 stones around his head, they miraculous bonded and became one stone, as he slept and experienced one of the Torah’s most moving dream narratives. What was going on? When you take a glance under the surface, what you see is that the miracle of the stones becoming one, tells you a great deal about Yaakov, a lot about the nature of truth, and potentially a lot about yourself.

Imagine a puzzle with many pieces, the kind that newlyweds buy…. You know that the pieces form a picture, and that knowledge is what keeps you in the game. The way you and I see the world is as a place that is multi-layered and very very fragmented. You can forget that there is an underlying puzzle with pieces that come together to form a picture of indescribable beauty, a picture that has not as yet fully emerged. Yaakov saw the world as a whole. Each piece has its meaning; his vision was clear enough to see that in its own way each piece is necessary and cohesive. The truth by definition is the entire picture. A hint at this is the way the word for truth, “emes,” is spelled. The first letter, aleph, is 13 letters from the middle, and the last letter, tavv, is also 13 letters from the middle. The number 13 is the value of the word echad, which means “one”. What this tells you is that all of the pieces are part of a whole, and equidistant from the core.

Emes isn’t easy. I read a story about Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky from Hanoch Teller’s book “Above the Bottom Line.” The story has him in a jewelry store. He asked the owner to weigh an object he was given as a present by his community (I think it was a kiddush cup). The owner couldn’t help himself-the words just came out before he could stop them. “Most people don’t have their gifts professionally appraised. They just say thank you.” Rav Yaakov explained himself. “I have to report my income when I pay tax. This includes donations and gifts.

I hope that I am not judging you too unfavorably when I suggest many people wouldn’t have a gift weighted so that they could be sure that they are giving Uncle Sam every cent that he deserves.

The truth is that living in a country, paying tax, and owning possessions is all part of one picture. We are too close to the picture to see its details, and we have a normal but disturbing tendency to suffice by seeing the rocks honestly and without prejudice, but separately, and not part of the whole.

Going back to Yaakov. The twelve stones united. The number 12 isn’t random. It hints at the 12 different ways of rearranging the letters of Hashem’s Name. This is also the number of easily visible constellations in the zodiac. In earlier times people knew the art of using astronomy to read the map of emerging reality. What they were actually observing was the flow of Hashem’s will as it descends to each and every piece of the Great Puzzle. Each of the twelve tribes was born in a different month, under a different constellation. This tells you that they all are essentially one, aspects of the way Hashem wants us to know Him, through the 12 different ways in which His name can be written.

Yaakov could bring up his 12 sons to find their own piece in the Great Puzzle. They were all tzaddikim, and they were all different.

He also “birthed himself” by seeing each chapter in his life as part of a whole. The pasuk calls him “Ish tamm,” a whole or complete man.

AND YOU?

Your life has many chapters. You may be able to see them form a whole, or you may be in process, or you may be stuck seeing each piece as totally unrelated to any other piece. Thinking about Yaakov’s dream may open some doors. Angels went up and angels came down. The Hebrew word for angel is “malach,” which literally means “agent.” Hashem’s messengers rise; they may have come to you to test you and to offer you the opportunity to find light in dark places.

The darkest place of all can be the human heart. Midrash Tanchumah says that the reason that Yaakov had to find himself exiled from his home, and on the road, with no clear vision of what would happen next can be learned through the laws concerning someone who kills another person through negligence. He must leave everything behind him and go to a city of refuge. Yaakov was judged by Hashem as having “killed” Eisov by his negligence. He shouldn’t have given up on Eisov – he could have drawn him close and kept him from digging his hole deeper and deeper. If you see the entire picture, you never totally give up on anyone. Yaakov’s error was that he didn’t believe in himself enough – his humility left him thinking that this was beyond him.
    
Let your truth see the light in every person and every situation. Hashem is always there, and that means that there is always a spark of truth just waiting for you.
 
Chanukah is coming! Light in the dark!!!!

Love,
Tziporah   

Dear friends,
 
I grew up in a world that thought that family is good, women can take pride in their femininity, men in their masculinity, and both can live lives of meaning. The distortions that you may have noticed didn’t emerge out of nowhere. They are the result of having little faith in Hashem’s way of bringing order to the world. We tend to trust only ourselves, and look towards only the great Self to define right and wrong. The goal is to make yourself happy, but the result is higher and higher stats of anxiety, suicide, and unbridled anger in which random murder just generates a yawn and maybe “where did it happen?” when you hear of a shooting in a public place. We have more illusory control and less real satisfaction in life. When I began to look for the roots of the distortions that we all live with, it took me to this week’s parshah.
 
The Parshah begins by telling you what Rivka had to go through before the birth of Yaakov and Eisov. Rashi says that when she passed an idolatrous temple, Eisov wanted to escape the womb and enter the world, and when she passed Shem and Evver’s House of Study Yaakov wanted to leave and be there. Besides the physical discomfort that she no doubt encountered, she was left wondering about who the child she was carrying really is; does he have an inborn need to live with irresolvable conflict between the world of pagan beliefs and belief in G-d? She consulted Shem, and was told that there are two children inside of her and that their fates will be very different; they will live with constant struggle and irresolvable competition. Could that have comforted her? Would it comfort you? There are another two questions that are natural when you read the narrative. The one that hit me the first time that I learned this episode was the idea of a fetus having strong opinions. The only word that fits the question is, “huh?”   The other question was that Eisov seemed doomed by no choice or fault of his own.

Not surprisingly, Maharal opens up an entirely new way of thinking. He wrote about people having inborn essential natures. The only difference between what happened in the Torah and what happens every day in every newborn’s conception is that Rivka knew what their inner drives would be, and we don’t until we watch them emerge.

Everyone has certain inborn traits that are not negotiable. It used to be fashionable to attribute everything to the environment to which you are exposed (this theory is still in style in some WOKE articles). It is now accepted that there are hereditary traits that are part of your makeup as well. You may be as driven towards music, for instance, as Eisov was to idol worship. You may need movement and activity as much as Yaakov needed truth. You aren’t accountable for your heredity per se; you are accountable for what you make of it. Eisov is the perfect example; he is described as being hairy and red-headed. The Alsheich points out that no one really cares about this sort of detail since usually the way a person looks doesn’t really give you much understanding of who the person is. In Eisov’s case, it was different. He had the passion of a red-head, and the ability to soak up whatever was around him the same way a spool of wool absorbs every bit of pigment when dipped in ink. Yaakov is described as smooth, like a piece of glass that never absorbs color from its environment. The other person described as “red” is Dovid. He was a fighter. His battles were never for booty or driven by ego. They were about a deep-seated desire for kavod shamayim, and recognition that in order to reveal Hashem’s presence, you have to do battle with the forces that conceal them. He was a man of war, and so was Eisov. The difference between them is that Eisov’s descendants are fighting for their own glory, (think Putin. Now stop and forget him!) while Yaakov’s descendants resist being drawn into any form of long-term allegiance other than their deep allegiance to Hashem.

There is still a problem. You may very reasonably think that life’s not fair. Isn’t easier to be Yaakov than it is to be Eisov? What if your difficult stormy nature gets the best of you? What if you feel as though there is a bit of Eisov inside you?

Mesilas Yesharim offers you a bit of truth. You are only judged for the process, your efforts, and longings. Success isn’t the “product”; it’s the process. You may at times get tired of the great battle between You and You. You may occasionally lose the battle and feel disgusted with yourself. This is what happened to Eisov. On the day of Avraham’s funeral, his vicarious experience with death touched his aggressive/impulsive/pleasure-oriented self. He wanted to escape mortality and went on a vacation from moral sensibility. He womanized and ended up with physical violence. He felt profoundly weary. In fact, when he returned from his various exploits and found Yaakov making soup for the mourners who would be coming home from the funeral, Eisov says, “give me soup…because I’m weary”. Notice. Not hungry. Weary.

What can you do if you have a bit of an Eisovdic streak? You can remember that Hashem is there with you and for you in the black moments. The Sfas Emmes says something that I found fascinating. The best way to feel the surge of willingness to fight the great battle between you and you is to remember that no matter where you find yourself, there is respite on Shabbos. The day has enough holiness that when you keep the halachos you can open up a door that stays closed all week. Shabbos brings that message home to you. There is an entirely different world, beyond the one that you see as your battlefield. It is one in which instead of seeking to control everything except for yourself, you return every thought of control and mastery to the Master. This process allows you to let go of the anxiety-producing fantasy of control, which is often the cause of self-hate. Let your message to yourself be, “I don’t want to be King. I want the joy of handing over the reins to the One who created everything that I will ever know, see, or experience.”

There is a Yaakov hidden in you. It’s the part of you that can resist the outside the way a ball of glass can be thrown into an inkwell and after a brief rinse, it’s clean. You are more resilient than you know.

You may very reasonably wonder who I am to say this sort of thing. It’s the result of my hearing about a friend who just had her first child in her fifties. She did battle with despair; it was stormy and rough, and Hashem let her prevail.
 
Love,
Tziporah   

Dear friends,   (This also appeared in Hamodia.)

Old age can be a time of glory. (Don’t ask how I know.)

Or not.

On one hand, physical decline awakens the potential to redefine and rediscover who you are and what you have integrated in the course of your life. Virtually all of the recent gedolei Torah attained their highest levels after seventy. The savage nature of decline, however, is sometimes painfully real. For Dovid, old age was a time of profound physical deterioration. He was weakened by illness to the point that his body was no longer able to retain its natural heat. The only way he could escape from his bone-chilling cold was through being aroused by physical contact. A woman named Avishag was brought in to attend to him. Their relationship was therapeutic rather than sensual, which tells you of how deeply he had physically declined, and how completely he had conquered physical lust. The trigger for his symptoms, Rashi says, was the fear he felt when he saw a prophetic vision in which an angel holding an outstretched sword over hovered over Yerushalaim. The underlying cause was a subtle one. In the course of his two-year struggle with Shaul, Dovid never attempted to kill him. He could have easily justified making this move, since he was in constant mortal danger. Dovid would not make what he considered to be a moral compromise. He chose not to strike down an anointed king, but rather he decided that he would do whatever he had to do to escape, and leave it to Hashem to determine how the monarchy that Hashem had promised him would eventually be his. At one point, when he had the opportunity to enter Shaul’s encampment and finally end the struggle by killing him, he resisted the temptation to do so but cut off a piece of Shaul’s garment. Dovid hoped that when Shaul would see that Dovid was close enough to kill him, but chose not to that Shaul would finally be able to release himself from the paranoia that drove him to relentlessly pursue Dovid. It didn’t work. There were consequences for Dovid for a subtle failure. For a moment, Dovid no longer saw the garment’s inherent value as one of Hashem’s creations. For you or me this would have absolutely no significance. For him, it was a lapse. The resulting tikkun was that no garment could keep him warm. Dovid could no longer be active in public life. His son Adoniyahu took advantage of the situation to try to claim the throne.

Who was Adoniyiahu? He was Dovid’s fourth son, and (at least in his own mind) the most obvious successor. Dovid’s first two sons, Amnon and Avshalom were no longer alive. Amnon had abused his stepsister Tamar, and was killed by her brother Avshalom. Avshalom was by any account a complex person. A tzadik and a nazir on one hand, and ruthlessly ambitious on the other hand. He rebelled against his father, and in an act of treason against Dovid’s explicit instructions, Yoav, Dovid’s greatest fighter, killed Avshalom. Dovid’s third son, Kilav, had no desire to rule. He was one of four people who died only because of Adam’s sin and apparently had dedicated his life exclusively to serving Hashem.

There was another son, Shlomo, Adoniyhu’s younger brother. Shlomo was the son that Dovid had with Batsheva, and had promised Batsheva that he would be heir to the throne. Why him?

The Talmud tells us that Dovid should never have fallen into the compromised relationship he had with Batsheva. Although it was legal, (when he married her, she was legally divorced from her husband Uriah since, as a soldier in Dovid’s army, he gave his wife a conditional divorce before heading out to war as all of the other soldiers did at that time) it was not what a person on his level should have done. The Talmud explains that the desire that drove him to this act was part of a bigger plan. Similarly, there was a bigger plan when Hashem unleashed the angel of desire to force Yehuda into having a relation with Tamar when he encountered her and was intimate with her without having been married to her. Again, technically their union was legal. She had a claim on the family in accordance with the laws of yibum (she was waiting for a family member to marry her after her husband, Yehuda’s son, had died childless) it was still unseemly that their union take place in this manner. The child of Dovid’s relation with Batsheva was Shlomo, and the child born to Yehuda and Tamar was Peretz, the ancestor of Israel’s kings. In both cases, Hashem chose to teach us what I shall call “step two”.

Every one of us makes bad choices. One response is to drown in either guilt or blame. Another possible response is to move on to step two. That means asking yourself what you should do now that things are not the way you planned them.

Dovid’s role when he realized the gravity of his error was to provide the Jewish people with a living example of what Tshuvah looks like. When you look at Tehillim 51, you will see the process that he taught by example. Yehuda’s role was to teach all future generations what honesty means when you are confronted with having done something wrong. There were no denials. No blame. He said, “She is right” without any further justification.

Adonyahu had no desire to see that Dovid’s child with Batsheva was the child of Tshuvah. He saw only himself and was blinded by his ambition. The text attributes his emotional myopia to the fact that Dovid never said no to Adonyahu when he was a child. Adoniyhu’s every wish was granted. In earlier times, we used the word 'spoiled.' Today this word is Very Out. So are the words ‘punishment’ and ‘discipline’. The closest you can come is using the words ‘structure’ and ‘limitations’. Even then, there is often the underlying assumption that in the democracy of contemporary family life the child must be included in determining borders, and must agree to structure. Arguably, the most tragic aspect of this episode is that Adoniyahu didn’t think that his father would deny him the throne. Why would he? He had never been denied anything he really wanted. He involved Yoav, who in any case had reason to fear that he was no longer in Dovid’s favor, and Evyassar, the Kohen who had lost his position as the result of his supporting Avshalaom. The one thing that Adoniyahu failed to consider was Hashem’s will that Shlomo be Dovid’s heir.

Nosson the prophet knew the truth. It was his responsibility to see that the “new king” not rule and that Shlomo be acknowledged as the future king publically so that no further mistakes erode the future of Shlomo’s kingdom. At this point, Nosson decided to involve Batsheva. He told her that she has to be the one to inform Dovid of what had taken place and to remind him of the oath he had made that Shlomo would reign. Nosson also put himself on the line by telling her that he would join her and explain to the king the details of the nascent rebellion against him.

She entered Dovid’s chamber, told him what he needed to hear, and added, “All of Yisrael is waiting for you.” Nassan then entered and told him of the coronation. Dovid’s next words brought the reality of Hashem’s presence into what could have been an ordinary defensive power play. “I swear by Hashem, who has saved me from all struggles that Shlomo shall rule after me.”

The Haftorah ends with the words “May my master, King Dovid live forever.” And he does. Something of him remains in the Torah leaders of all generations and will be finally seen for what it is when Dovid’s descendant, Moshiach comes.
 
May it be soon.
 
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

Divorce is never easy, not for the couple and not for their kids. It may be the best (or only) way for a new beginning. It may be the only way to live again, but that doesn’t make it easy.
When two good friends of mine needed their marriage to end over 40 years ago, there was no exception to this rule. When they parted ways, the husband returned to the States, and several years later was tragically killed in a car accident. Their divorce was particularly painful. Their only daughter, Baila, has CP and as her care became more and more difficult physically, she became a fairly frequent visitor to our home for Shabbos. When eventually Baila’s father returned to the States, things only got harder, and when he was later tragically killed in a car accident her visits became more frequent. This gave her a change of scene and also gave her mother a bit of respite. Baila (not her real name) is bright, energetic, and loves life. Her physical disabilities don’t allow her to do much more than sit in a wheelchair and communicate in a way that demands that the listener stay really focused in order to understand her. She enjoys the mall, the news, and seeing and experiencing as much as she can. When her mother passed away, she was (thank G-d) already living in a wonderful hostel for severely handicapped individuals. My daughter and I began to visit her monthly along with a dear friend from the neighborhood who took a shine to Baila (not too hard). For several years we visited, went on excursions to the supermarket or to a nearby coffee shop, and helped her eat her favorite selections.

Then I remarried.

For Baila, this was the end of my presence in her life. For reasons that I don’t really understand, she assumed that this meant that our relationship had to end. I accepted this (and in honesty wasn’t overly saddened since the visits were very time-consuming as the hostel is far from Har Nof). Other people are also involved in her life. One of them is a wonderful woman who lived in her neighborhood. A lively young widow, with seven kids (so she isn’t looking for a time filler!) she is very much part of Baila’s world. When she recently became engaged, she told Baila that she will soon be getting married. Baila, at first, felt betrayed and would have ended their relationship. Then she said the magic words that I didn’t think of saying: “It won’t be on your cheshbon,” she told Baila. “You won’t lose out.”

The woman, Rivka Abrams-Donin is Jonathan Pollards new wife. Both of them are people of passion for good. Besides wishing them the best of the best, I want to present them both, each in their own way, as exemplifying some of the lessons of this week’s parshah.
The parshah starts with Avraham waiting for guests three days after his bris milah. At his age, he certainly could have decided to put up a “closed” sign for the day. The reason that he didn’t is as the text says, “And G-d appeared to him beneath the trees of Mamre, as he was sitting before the door of his tent in the heat of the day.” The phrase “kichom hayom,” which people often translate as “in the heat of the day,” literally means “like” the heat of the day. The Kli Yakar explains that he, Avraham, was like the heat of the day. His passion to search for guests was burning within him.

When you look at your life, it may be worthwhile occasionally asking yourself what you really care about. Where’s the fire? The soul is called Hashem’s candle. It’s meant to burn with passion. It can easily be cooled. There are all sorts of reasons. Complacency born of comfort. Complacency born of disillusion. Complacency born out of misplaced goals.
Avraham’s love of Hashem drove him to want to introduce the Creator to His creations. How did this affect him?

The Midrash tells over that when he tried to select a cow to slaughter for meat, one of the three calves he chose escaped from the coral. He ran after it (yes, at 99 after a bris). He followed it into a cave deeper and deeper until it led him to a chamber full of spiritual light. He became aware that this was the burial place of Adam and Chava and resolved that this is where Sara and he will be buried when their times come.

This is of course the Maarat Hamachpeilah in Chevron. The word chevron means place of joining. The cave is the place from which every soul must pass on its journey to the Next World.

Whether you realize it or not, we are all on a journey to the next world. What you take with you is yourself. So much of that is defined by how you lived, and what grabbed your heart.
Asking the right questions and more significantly acting on the answers your heart gives you can change the entire picture of who you are, and where your journey takes you.
 
Nessia tovah! Bon voyage!

Love
Tziporah