What a week this was! I dont mean the week that past for me personally as much as I mean the week that the Jews in Egypt lived through as is narrated in this weeks parshah, BiShalach. Before you start mumbling complaints under your breath about contrived introductions to a dvar Torah that I wanted to write, Ill admit that the realities of the parshah resonate more vividly to me because of the way I experienced the past week. I am writing this letter Monday night. Last week at this time I was out of the operating room after my hip replacement and spending the moments playing with a device that releases pain killers whenever you press the button. The result was that I was virtually pain free. This is very different than what I had been through vicariously when I saw other people emerge from their surgical nirvana. I wasnt alone for even a moment over the next several days. Family and friends kept an eye on me, supplied me with everything they could imagine I would want (from playing cards to a very serious commentary on Kohelet). I returned home on Thursday to more and more of the same. The light of chessed appeared in many different forms. Each visitor left something of their own personality with me. The real question is what am I going to do with it all the illumination and grace that I experienced. The easiest thing would be moving on. Rashbi comments on the way the Jews in ancient Egypt felt the morning after the revelation of Shechina. He says that the Jews were overwhelmed by what they had seen the night before. They were people who were broken by their slavery both of body and of spirit, and suddenly they heard the angelic praise of G-ds breaking all the rules. Their bodies could hardly contain their souls, and the dazzling clarity left the banal occurrences of normal physical life unappealingly gray. They felt imprisoned by the stress of facing up to the limits that are inherent to getting through their days, which now looked materialistic ordinary and worst of all limiting. The drama that unfolds in the Parshah reflects what was going on inside them. Pharaoh didnt disappear. Neither does the yetzer hara, or the conflicted reality we face when material reality feels stifling, they became aware that he was in hot pursuit. The sea was in front of them, the desert and its horrors on all sides. Just yesterday they had enough faith to drop everything and head into the unknown. They had seen miracles that no one had ever seen before. And now they are locked into the grip of Today. I dont want the moments of great light and human kindness to fade the next time someone informs me non-verbally that they would prefer to get on the bus before me, or to let the disappointment when someone is revealed as being less than I wish they were blind me to the goodness that I have and am still experiencing from so many people. Finding ways to guard the moments that are worth guarding is something of a skill. Its a skill that Hashem wants us all to learn. It is for that reason that Hashem didnt have the Jews leave Egypt and find themselves in Eretz Yisrael after a short jaunt through Philistine territory via the western coast. They needed to feel trapped from all sides and rediscover their latent emunah. Then they needed to see the sea split. Earning a living and finding a shidduch are both compared to splitting the sea. You have to reach a point of being fully aware that you arent your own salvation if you want these times to give you some light, and not just entrap you in heavier and heavier darkness. You have to be willing to both cry out, and to enter the waters…Sometimes in a concrete sense this means when you feel trapped by your indecision, or lack of seeming options, you pray, look at what your choices are, use your common sense, ask advice, and then close your eyes and jump! Just do what you have to do, and live in the moment Hashem gave you. The name of the man who jumped into the sea first was Nachshon ben Aminadav. Every so often, you need to step back, see the light you once saw, follow his example and just jump. I had a sort-of-Nachshon experience. The woman who organized the Shabbaton where I fell didnt seem to make much of an effort to find out what had happened to me after I disappeared by ambulance Shabbos morning. I was taken to Shaarei Tzedek which is a far walk from the hotel, so I wasnt expecting anyone over Shabbos, but I was sure that immediately after Shabbos she would either come or call. She didnt. I found myself repeating the story of how I fell to a revolving entourage of doctors, interns, nurses, etc. Each one asked about the response from the Shabbaton management. I decided to jump into the sea. Not only wouldnt I fall into the trap of cynical judgment in my responses to them, I decided not to feel them. The Torah requires that we judge each other fairly which means not jumping to negative conclusions when there are other possibilities of interpreting situations. I searched my mind for possible excuses but didnt come up with much. I finally decided (and for me that was the Nachshon moment) that the words I have to force myself to both think and say are, I dont know. It didnt always feel real, but I kept on going back to the IDK formula anyway. Today I found out that the reason she was out of touch is that her son got engaged that very night!! Of course she had to live out her story, in the ongoing narrative of her family. I have no way of knowing how many times she may have tried to call me since the phone was ringing constantly that motzoi Shabbos. I do know now that she was where she was supposed to be-at the only engagement party her son will ever have, G-d willing. I didnt have enough imagination to think of this possibility, but knowing that halachah demands that you dont judge others without knowing the entire story saved me from negative obsessing. The Baal Shem Tov said, You are where your mind is, and halachah kept me where I wanted to be. The only way you can make it when you are on the edge of the water is if you can recall the moments of clarity that are part of life. This is why remembering the exodus is so central. Making this clarity real only comes through knowing what Hashem wants of you moment by moment. My family started a Mishneh Brura kollel in my husbands A.H. memory. It is dedicated to sponsoring learning practical halachah. Although women dont have a commandment to study Torah, they can gain the merit of learning through supporting this sort of endeavor. Unlike most learning program, this one has no expenses since the members learn wherever they want. They have to complete tests that my sons put together, and later grade. As long as they learn the halacha that they commit to which comes to about a half hour an evening, they receive $120 a month. You (or you and a couple or more friends) can sponsor a young man and in return you will actually get half of their reward for the learning. A binding contract (which is called a Yissachar-Zevulun agreement) was put together by a Rav, so that you can actually know which specific person is learning in your merit. You can email me (tziporah48@gmail) for details. It gives you some strength if you want to jump into the sea. Love, Tziporah tziporahheller/
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:44:22 +0000
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